


Lilet Never Happened

by ParadiseAvenger



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Abduction, F/M, missing child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-05
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-31 14:31:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 15
Words: 38,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1032787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadiseAvenger/pseuds/ParadiseAvenger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because that's the awful truth about bad things. Once it's all over, it's like nothing existed. It's like Lilet never happened... After her disappearance, her parents followed her into the very heart of darkness. AU. Adult Themes. SoraXKairi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Second Victim

Please, check out my first ORIGINAL NOVEL! **The Breaking of Poisonwood by Paradise Avenger.** (Summary: People were dead. When Skye Davis bought me at a slave auction as a birthday present for his brother, I had no idea what my new life was going to be like, but I had never expected this. It all started when Venus de Luna was killed and I was to take her place, to become the new savior… Then, bad things happened and some people died. In the heart of the earth, we discovered the ancient being that Frank Davis had found and created and used to his advantage. The Poisonwood—)

I jacked the title from the movie “Lilet Never Happened.” (It’s a movie about Lilet, a maladjusted Filipino-American street-girl, who becomes Manila’s most famous child prostitute. I’ve watched the trailer about 20 times and I’m very exicted for it to come out.) 

For some reason, the title just speaks to me so that’s why I’m using it. (Lots of random stuff inspires me with story ideas.) 

I give you my word that there will be no child prostitution in this story! Really!

X X X

Because that’s the awful truth about bad things. Once it’s all over, it’s like nothing existed. It’s like Lilet never happened… 

But that’s not the beginning of the story. That’s the end!

The beginning began on a cool summer afternoon when Kairi was sixteen, just as the sun was sinking below the horizon and the lights of the great city were coming on haphazardly like fireflies through the darkness. Kairi had spent the day at the mall with friends, casting shy little glances at her beautiful friend—Sora Strife—as she shopped. He’s so beautiful, she thought as she walked down the street with her shoulder bag and her few purchases clutched in her hands. She wondered what exactly she felt for him. They had been friends for so long and she didn’t want to ruin their friendship, but… 

She shivered a little, wishing she had worn a light jacket just to cover her bare shoulders. She should have let Sora walk her home. She could have shivered and gotten his jacket from him. She could have inhaled the scent of his body and snuggled deep into his soft hoodie that held her like the arms she dreamed of. 

Smiling, she hugged herself and hurried along with her head full of whirling thoughts of Sora. Looking back, she might have wondered if she was paying attention to the world around her… would it have happened? Would Lilet have happened? 

Maybe yes. 

Maybe no. 

But either way, Lilet happened, but that’s still not where the story begins. 

The story really begins when the two men stepped out of the alley. One was big and broad-shouldered with thick scruffy red eyebrows peeking out from under a cap slouched low on his ugly face. The other was tall and slender with long-fingered birdlike hands and pale skin. They smiled at her predatorily and ice filled Kairi’s veins. She clutched her bags to her chest, lowered her eyes, ducked her head, and tried to push past them. 

Why was she that stupid? Did she think they would just let her go? 

No. 

Not a chance.

Looking back, she was glad she didn’t let Sora walk her home. What if they had done something horrible to him as well? 

Their hot hands grabbed her cold bare shoulders and she felt the brick wall bite into her back as they pushed her against it. Her throat froze, clenched in fear and agony. She wanted to beg them not to hurt her, but her lips were trembling so badly that only a little animal sound came out. They talked about her, talked about who was going to take her first and how they were going to do it. The shopping bag slipped from her fingers and lay on the ground like a small body crushed dead and flat. 

Kairi put her hands out as if she would be able to push through them like shadows, but those hot hands only gripped her wrists hard enough to bruise. They laughed, breath hot and heavy on her flesh. Then, they pushed her down and the concrete of the alley bit into the back of her head. Her vision swam and a scream finally escaped her mouth.

“Shut her up!”

“I know, I know!”

What was in her mouth? A sock, a shirt, a fist, a dick? She couldn’t remember and she couldn’t see. They put something over her face as if to smother her. 

Then, she felt their hot hands pushing up her denim skirt, her soft tank top, and her bra. The cold air kissed her skin, tightened in the pit of her belly like a block of ice. Her panties provided no obstacle and they simple ripped them down over her legs. Kairi tried to scream ad fight, tried everything to get away, but her arms were so limp and heavy from the blow to her head. 

She just couldn’t…

Then, the first man was inside her, tearing her apart like a finely wrapped gift. She screamed, but her voice didn’t go any farther than her lips. The gag was too effective. No one was coming to help her. The thrusting, fucking, and tearing went on forever until she thought she would die. Then, she felt wet and uncomfortable and the hands that had been holding her down let go. She thought they were finished with her, but it was only the second one’s turn. Again, the anguish and vile touches went on and on and on. 

The cold from the concrete had frozen her body like ice, like a statue. They let her go and she just lay there, unmoving, and listened to the sounds of them zipping up their pants. She though they were finished with her now. They had to be.

No.

Not a chance.

Not even close.

After all, rape wasn’t about sex. 

It was about violence. 

The first blow of their heavy muddy work boots to her chest cracked a slender rib, ripped it like a sliver of paper, shattered it like glass. There were strikes to her covered face and she was almost thankful for the gag in her mouth that cushioned her teeth and prevented them from shattering. She wanted to scream, to cry out, but she couldn’t. They beat her for even longer than they had fucked her and she didn’t remember half of what they did to her. Blessed darkness took her into its warm safe arms.

The only thing she remembered was waking up in that dark alley, cold and violated and beaten and broken, and feeling the agony all over and the air being heavy with the scent of blood. Her blood, all her blood. She felt like a discarded porcelain doll—paper-thin white skin, stripped naked for someone else’s pleasure, redressed in blood and sex, staring blue glass eyes, and tousled unbrushed matted hair. 

Someone was leaning over her, a pale moon-white face, and soft moth-like hands touching her throat. “Doll, are you alive?” The voice was floating in from far away like a memory, but she would never forget it. “Doll, hey, blink if you can hear me.”

Kairi did blink and she saw the impression of white teeth, of a smile. 

“That’s a good girl. I’m going to get you help. You’re going to be okay.” 

Then, for a while there was nothing but darkness, blackness, a never-ending abyss of night surrounding her. 

After that, whiteness, blinding whiteness. Hospital… She was alone in the sterile white room save some sickeningly bright flowers and few cards. She couldn’t feel half of her body and her breath was difficult in coming. Outside her door, she saw a policeman in dark blue. He looked tired. Struggling, Kairi called out to him. He looked so shacked, as if he was seeing a ghost, seeing someone come back from the dead. Then, there were nurses all over her like flies on a carcass. She didn’t know what they did to her, but the pain went away and the darkness came back.

She dreamed for eternity.

She had nightmares for eternity. 

The blackness went on forever and ever. 

When she woke up again, it felt like an eternity had passed and her mother was sitting at her bedside reading a book. Her throat was dry and tight. For a long while, she couldn’t speak and her mother didn’t notice her open eyes. Then, there was a light knock at the door and then a heartbreaking crash. 

Flowers, water, and chips of glass spread across the white linoleum.

Kairi’s mother leaped up in her chair, book flying out of her hands and clasping both to her breast. She turned around, that expression on her face—sour, not angry, just unhappy. “Sora!” she snapped. “You must be quiet!” Then, she saw the expression on his beautiful face and turned back to the bed. Her eyes welled up with tears at the sight of her daughter’s open eyes. She embraced Kairi so tightly, but she felt no pain. 

Kairi’s eyes were locked on Sora as she hung like a ragdoll in her mother’s arms, arms limp. He didn’t look like himself, though no less beautiful. His face was pale, as if he hadn’t been in the sun for a long time, something that wasn’t possible for him. His hair was more tousled than usual, there were dark bruise-like circles beneath his cerulean eyes, and he looked too thin. Kairi tried to call out to him, but he backed away to give her mother this moment alone with her. 

When Kairi’s mother finally eased her back against the pillows, a nurse was gathering up the flowers, sweeping up the glass, and mopping up the water with a rag in the doorway. Her mother gave her some cool water to drink and asked her how she was feeling.

But Kairi wasn’t feeling anything except confusion.

“What happened?” she croaked.

“Oh, sweetheart,” her mother whispered and her eyes filled again. “When you were walking home, you were assaulted.”

“I was…” Kairi remembered the tearing pain deep inside her. 

Her mother nodded. “Raped, sweetheart,” she whispered and her voice broke off in sobs. 

Kairi lay there for a long time, listening to her mother cry. She felt curiously numb. “How long has it been?”

“Two months.”

Kairi’s hand felt cold and she touched her ribs, her chest, her collarbones, her stomach. Was there a bump there? Swollen and heavy? 

No, that wasn’t possible.

Since she had spent two months in a coma, her body had healed but she was so weak from not moving on her own. It took more than two weeks for full use of her body to come back. Then, she was less than eager to set foot outside her room. She lay, trapped beneath the covers, afraid to breathe the outside air. Her friends came to visit her, but she wouldn’t see them. Any of them, not even Sora. Then, never to be perturbed, he climbed the tree outside her window and tapped on the glass. 

She had to smile. 

She had to let him in. 

Sora sat beside her on her bed. She was so relieved to see some tan on his face and some light in his cerulean eyes. Timidly, he reached out to take her hand, to touch her as he always did, but she shied away from him. “I understand, Kai,” he murmured. “But, please, don’t throw me out.” His face was soft and sweet, the face of her best friend, but Kairi was only reminded of the men who had raped her.

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and then opened them slowly. 

His face was the only thing there—no monsters, no nightmares, no rapists. 

“I… I wanted to talk to you, too, but I was afraid…” she confessed.

“You know I won’t hurt you.” His voice was soft and tender, not even a little bit hurt at her words. 

“I know,” she whispered. “I’m afraid of…” She looked at her bedroom door, feeling coldness in the pit of her stomach. She already knew what her mother would say, but what would Sora say? Would he hate her too? Would he scream and yell? But he was her best friend. She could trust him with everything and anything. Then, she pushed down the covers of her bed and pulled her baggy shirt against her rounded belly. 

Sora’s face went a little pale, but to his credit, he did not show anything else—no judgment. “What will you do?”

Tears flooded her eyes. “What can I do? This is a child… a child of rape.”

When he reached out to touch her, she allowed him to. “What do you want to me to say to you?”

She sobbed, clutching his hand until it must have hurt him but he didn’t pull away. “What should I do?”

“You know you have options,” he whispered.

“I know I could, but… I’ve never liked the idea. But this child is…” Tears rolled down her pale cheeks. 

He squeezed her hand tenderly, stroking it with his fingers until her harsh grip on him eased a little. 

“Will you stay with me, Sora?”

“Yes. Of course. You’re my best friend. I’d never leave you alone.”

She embraced him tightly, sobbing into his chest. He held her, breathing deep and even to calm her down. She was still afraid of men, of what had happened, but Sora was different. He was her best friend and she trusted him. Hell would freeze over before he would hurt her. 

When she told her mother about the baby, the child of rape, her mother wanted her to get rid of it, to kill it, but Kairi had made up her mind. 

She was keeping the baby. 

Seven months later, Lilet was born. She was so beautiful and, thankfully, she looked like Kairi rather than her terrible villainous fathers. Sora was the only one to be with her in the delivery room, holding her hand even though she was digging into his skin with her fingernails and making him bleed. Her mother was still in a rage over the dirty child, shouting and screaming in the waiting room, and Kairi’s father had never been in the picture. 

Lilet happened.

And so, the real story begins.

X X X

Is it crazy that I’ve posted a new story already?! Do you know anyone else who does that or am I the only one?! Am I special (and not just special ed)?! Yeah, yeah, I know I’m crazy. I don’t suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it!

I know this is a little confusing to start off with, but I wanted this kind of tone for the first chapter—the whole past-present-tense mysterious what-the-hell tragic tone. Stick it out, everybody. I know you can do it! Next chapter is normal tone. 

Questions, comments, concerns?


	2. Hide and Seek

Hmm, what do I have to say? 

Oh, and just to clear things up, this story is NOT, I repeat, NOT about Kairi’s rape or the after effects or… anything involving the rape really… Other than her child. Lilet is the big part of this story. I mean, come on, her name is right in the title! So, not so much rape or even sex in this story. Marginal chance of abuse, but hey, it’s me!

Well, I’m glad absolutely no one got lost in the last chapter. I thought it was a little skip-y and weirdly paced, but apparently not. And I’m glad no one has forgotten the old fantastic Disney movies like The Hunchback of Notre Dame! 

I’m so happy!

X X X

Seven years had passed since the dark afternoon of Kairi Hart’s violation, since the two months she had wasted in a coma, since Lilet had been born. The remaining seven months of her pregnancy had been Hell. Her mother had made her life impossible. Only Sora’s company could possibly brighten her day. After the baby was born, her life became even more difficult, if that was possible. Her mother refused to so much as heat up a bottle for Lilet and since Kairi was still in high school and had no job that could pay for child care, the threat of dropping out became very real to her. Sora wanted to help her, but he was rather useless—he couldn’t change diapers and was nervous about holding such a fragile-looking thing. After all, he had big strong arms and large hands with long fingers. It was Sora’s mother that finally offered to help out when she realized Kairi was completely serious about keeping the baby. Mrs. Strife ran a daycare and added Lilet to her roster at no charge provided Kairi got her grades up. 

All that Hell seemed so close, as if seven long years hadn’t passed since the summer she turned sixteen, hadn’t separated Kairi from the terrible events. But she was twenty-three now and Lilet was six, almost seven. 

Besides, all that Hell was far behind her now and a lot of good things had happened since then. More good things than she had ever thought possible. After she was raped, she didn’t think anyone would ever really love her, but Sora did. Sora had those eyes of his, those eyes that saw everything beneath the flesh. 

It was a regular night when he asked her to marry him. They were eighteen, sitting on the couch and watching television, and Lilet had one of his long fingers trapped in her chubby little hand. Kairi still remembered the way the light caught in Sora’s blue eyes and the smile on his face. Then, almost out of the blue, he leaned over and rested his forehead on hers and whispered, ‘Spend your life with me?’ Kairi remembered the way her heart skipped in her chest and the knot in the throat and the heat burning like fire in her veins. When she spoke, her lips just brushed his—as soft as butterfly’s wings—and she breathed, ‘Yes.’ She hadn’t even realized he had ever loved her. She thought she would simply pine away after him until the end of her days. 

Now, they had been married five years—quite a feat for a teen marriage facing so much strife, but maybe that’s why Sora’s last name was Strife and now it was Kairi’s as well. They both definitely had strife coming their way. It would be like Lilet never happened…

“Sweetheart…?” 

Kairi went from room to room, pretending she had no idea where her daughter or husband were hiding. Lilet was an easy mark—the child was giggling madly in her favorite hiding place in the cupboard beneath the sink. Sora, on the other hand, could successfully remain silent even if she was inches away from finding him. The only one he ever giggled to alert his position for was Lilet. Kairi had hardly a prayer for finding him so she wasn’t even bothering to. 

“Hmm, I could have sworn a little girl by the name of Lilet came in here, but I must have been wrong.” Kairi sat down at the kitchen table with a thump and put her face in her hands. “Oh, what am I ever to do? I’ve lost my baby!” She pretended to cry, great gasping fake sobs. 

Sure enough, the little cabinet door creaked open and dark eyes peeked out, catching the light. 

Kairi laid it on a little thicker.

Only then did Lilet slink out from under the sink like a stray cat coming in for a saucer of warm milk. No matter how many times Kairi played the fake-crying-gag on Lilet, the child always came out, even if she knew Kairi was faking. 

“Don’t cry, Mommy,” Lilet said and put a warm little hand to the back of Kairi’s head. “I’m not gone.”

Those exact words would haunt Kairi forever, but right now they meant nothing. They were just words, silly little useless words. 

Knowing she had won and grinning, Kairi captured Lilet in her arms and hugged her tightly. The little girl giggled and shrieked and floundered in Kairi’s arms like a caught fish. Finally, she wrest her way out of Kairi’s arms, tripped over her long gangly legs like a foal, and fell down on the kitchen floor. But there were no tears with Lilet. There were rarely tears, even as a baby. She was like someone in mourning, quiet and soft yet her presence filled up the room faster and stronger than any black potent grief. 

Kairi smiled at her child, reaching out her hand. “Help me find Daddy?”

Lilet grinned. “Why can’t you ever find Daddy?”

“He’s just too good at hiding for me,” Kairi explained. 

“Then how come you can always find me?”

“I never find you. You always give yourself up!”

Lilet set her pretty cotton-candy-pink mouth. “Well, next time, you’ll never find me! I mean it!”

Kairi giggled, gave her little daughter a kiss, and a small push. “Come on. Let’s find Daddy.”

Today, Sora had given himself away by making banging and rattling noises, spooky noises. Per usual, he had found and even better hiding place. He was standing in the broom cupboard in the basement, arms crossed over his chest and eyes closed as if he was a sleeping vampire. When Lilet opened the door, he leaned down and kissed her smartly on the tip of the nose. Then, he opened his mouth to reveal vampire fangs and it would have been far more frightening if they hadn’t fallen right out of his mouth along with a mess of drool.

“What took you so long?” he asked after he had shoved the slimy teeth back into his pocket and caught Lilet up in his strong arms. 

“What do you think? I couldn’t find her!” Kairi snapped.

Sora laughed—a beautiful contagious sound. “You stink at this game! Maybe we should find another.”

“Oh no! Why would I deny you two the chance to make a fool out of me once a week on Wednesday afternoons?!” Kairi grabbed Sora around the waist and hugged him tightly. Sora caught her in his other arm and hugged her close.

“One big happy family!” Lilet shouted and pushed her parent’s faces together in a messy kiss. “Happy, happy, happy!”

Sora kissed Kairi full on the mouth and then kissed Lilet. Then, he gave them both one final squeeze and said, “Well, Daddy’s not happy. Daddy has to go off to work now so don’t hide from Mommy. You know she’s bad at finding you.”

Lilet giggled and raced away upstairs.

Sora put his arm around Kairi’s waist and walked up the basement steps with her, listening to the creaking floorboards. She saw him to the door and helped him into his coat. Then, she smoothed the lapel down against his chest, feeling his strong heartbeat. Sometimes, she wished he didn’t half to go. When he was gone, it felt like a piece of her was missing and this time he wouldn’t be back until Friday—business trip—not that Kairi ever feared the stereotypical “business trip” from her sweet Sora. 

“Life is good?” Sora asked as he frequently did. 

Kairi smiled at him. “Yeah, life is good.”

“I’ll hurry back.”

“I know you will.”

Then, he gave her one final kiss and she closed the front door after him. She didn’t go to the window to watch him leave, just looked at the empty couch and wondered what she would watch on television there without Sora around to demand some manner of sports or comedy. Life was so different when he wasn’t home—simpler, but not better. 

They had been together forever, after all. 

First—best friends. 

Then—married. 

Finally—lovers.

Kairi stood there, lost in thought for what felt like forever, listening to the cars on the road and the sound of Lilet’s distant laughter. Out of nowhere, Lilet’s kitten, Prince William, attacked her leg. Kairi plucked the kitten from her jeans and cradled it in the crook of her elbow, tickling the furry little chest. Then, she went in search of Lilet and found her in the backyard playing on the swing set, swinging dangerously high. Lilet never said goodbye to Sora when he left, she just didn’t. 

Kairi sat down on the swing beside her daughter and swayed back and forth absently. The warm summer air kissed her skin and the sun beat down on her bare shoulders. There were little orange flags in the grass, fluttering like fallen leaves. Sora was thinking about putting in a pool. Kairi’s garden was burgeoning—irises inlaid with silvery dew, big red roses, sunflowers as big as her head, peonies of every color, pansies and marigolds in the low front beds. 

She sighed and looped her arms over the chains of the swing. Her life was beautiful, good and perfect and everything she had ever dared dreamed of. She looked up at the perfect blue sky, the sky that was the same color as Sora’s beautiful eyes. 

“Mommy! Smile!” Lilet shouted. She was off the swings, beautiful buy-red tresses shining like jewels in the summer sunlight. She looked a lot like Kairi did when she was a child except for those dark eyes. “Look over here, Mommy!” She cart wheeled and somersaulted, rolling in the grass and laughing. “Look at me, Mommy! Smile!”

In the perfect blue sky, a single dark cloud loomed on the horizon—a dark thunderhead that promised rain and thunder. In a few days’ time, the cloud will have covered the entire town and the Strife family would begin living up to their name.

X X X

This chapter was to set the mood of what their family is like. 

Next chapter: real meat! (Why does that sound like a commercial for sloppy Joes or steaks or something?)

Questions, comments, concerns?


	3. That Day at Moon Lake

Ah, the meat of the story. I feel like I’ve used “meat” too many times. I need a new word.

X X X

It was a beautiful morning. Kairi made a wonderful breakfast of smiley-face pancakes, got Lilet into her bathing suit, and changed into a sundress and bikini herself. She had stretch marks on her stomach since her body had been so small and slender and not built for carrying children when she was pregnant with Lilet, but she didn’t care. Sora said they made her look powerful, like a female superhero. She packed her beach bag and the cooler with some lunch, grabbed the big umbrella and a bigger towel from the hall closet, fetched Lilet’s sack of beach toys, and bottled Lilet into the minivan for a nice day at Moon Lake. 

In the car, Kairi dialed Sora and talked to him for a few minutes before his meeting—telling him her plans for the day and how much she missed him in their bed the night before. She could practically feel him smiling over the line. 

Then, she called her mother. (Kairi called her mother, Holly, at least once a week. Sometimes, Holly answered. Sometimes, she didn’t. Sometimes, she only cried and apologized.) Regardless of how her mother had acted when Kairi was pregnant, she still wanted Lilet to know her grandmother and was willing to let bygones be bygones. When Holly picked up, she sounded lonely.

“Hey Mom,” Kairi said and put the smile in her voice.

“Is that Gramma?” Lilet asked, voice ringing from the backseat. “Tell her I say hi.”

“Lilet sends her love, Mom. I was wondering if you wanted to go to the lake with us today?” she asked. “I could even pick you up.”

Holly was quiet for a long moment, but then she finally said, “Yes, darling. That would be lovely.”

Kairi smiled. “I’ll be there to pick you up in about five minutes. Wear your bathing suit and bring a hat, okay?”

“Of course.”

Holly Hart still lived in the house Kairi had grown up in. Every time Kairi pulled up in front of it, she felt like turning to see the reassurance in Sora’s face before she got out, walked up to the front door like she was going to her execution, and letting herself in. The yelling always started a few minutes later, but Sora sat outside her house until he saw the lights come on in her room, letting him know she was alright and that she didn’t need to escape again. Even now, Kairi still had to remind herself that she wasn’t sixteen and pregnant anymore. She was married and Lilet was a beautiful seven-year-old and Holly had no real power over her anymore. 

“Do you want to go get Gramma?” Kairi asked Lilet, turning in her seat. 

Lilet nodded, dark eyes all aglow. “Yeah!” She unbuckled herself, scrambled out, and dashed up to the door at top speed. 

Holly opened the door before Lilet even had a chance to knock. Her face, aged with pain and faded anger, was bright with a smile and she had her salt-and-pepper hair scraped back in a long braid. She had a wide-brimmed gardening hat on her head and a knit backpack over one shoulder. She took Lilet’s small hand in her own, ducking her head and smiling at the little girl. 

Kairi’s heart warmed. “Hi Mom,” she said when Holly opened the door to help Lilet in. 

Holly smiled at her only daughter. “Hello Kairi. Thank you for inviting me along. Where’s lovely Sora?”

“He’s on a business trip.”

“Business trip!” Lilet repeated and plugged in her seatbelt. 

“I’m driving now. Everybody ready?” Kairi asked because Lilet was a safe-driving fanatic. 

“Click it or ticket, Gramma,” Lilet said smartly.

Holly smiled and did as she was told. “Are you excited to go to the lake, sweetheart?”

“Yes. I love the lake!” Lilet clapped her hands. “Will you open the window, Mommy?”

Kairi obligingly rolled down the window and watched her daughter lolling her head out the window and enjoying the summer breeze. Holly looked a little concerned, but Kairi only smiled at her. Sora did that same thing—like a dog until his eyes were streaming and his hair was a mess, once he had even caught a bug in his teeth—so Kairi couldn’t very well reprimand Lilet. 

They rode in soft silence to the lake. Sometimes, Kairi thought her mother didn’t know what to say or to do around Lilet since she had wanted Kairi to abort her, had raged while Kairi was in the delivery room with poor sweet Sora, practically disowned her when Lilet was born, and made life incredibly difficult. Despite all that, she still wanted Holly in their lives. Kairi reached over, touched her mother’s hand, and smiled when Holly looked at her. 

Moon Lake was more of a lake-beach-park combination. The park was all rolling green grass (with a dog park to keep the dog doo in an area where everyone expected it), nice hills, several white gazebos for having lunch under, benches, and even a baseball diamond. There was a playground with a merry-go-round, swings, teeter-totter, jungle gym, and other miscellaneous equipment. The lake was contentedly large with a nice six-mile walk around the entire rim through the woods and over small easily-climbed cliffs that were perfect for divers. There were two strips of perfect white sand where it was shallow enough for children but deep enough for powerful swimmers the farther they got out. There was a section for boating, water skiing, and the like. It had a little something for everyone. 

When they arrived, Lilet dashed from the car, shrieking like a mad cricket and jumping right into the water. She came screaming out not two seconds later while Kairi wrestled the umbrella from the back of the minivan. Wet and cold, Lilet flung her arms around Kairi’s bare legs and begged her mother to go swimming. 

“Honey, you know going swimming in cold water is Daddy’s job,” Kairi said.

“Please?!”

“Maybe a little later,” she began. 

“Please?!”

“Okay, after lunch.” 

Lilet grinned.

Kairi caved easily and they all knew it. 

A few people were already set up on the small strip of white sand at the edge of the lake, spaced well apart since it was early yet. Kairi and Holly carried the beach supplies from the car to their desire spot under a nice big tree. Regardless, Kairi shoved the big umbrella deep into the sand and laboriously cranked it up. Lilet had already dragged her toy sack from the car and had spread most of the contents across the sand. Holly set down the cooler, beach totes, and wiped her brow. 

“It’s warm already,” Holly said. 

“I know.” Kairi lifted a hand to shadow her face, squinted out over the golden lake, and shouted to her swimming daughter, “Lilet, come here and let me put some sunscreen on your shoulders!”

“I won’t burn! I’m like Daddy!”

“Daddy’s an alien. Now come here before you look like Mommy!”

“Like a lobster?”

Kairi laughed. “Yes, like a lobster! Now come here!”

Lilet clambered out of the water, impatiently let Kairi smear her with sunscreen, and then went off hauling on Holly’s hand to get her to go into the water. Like a typical grandmother, Holly went along hopelessly until she was knee-deep in the cold lake. Kairi, on the other hand, stretched out in the sun and enjoyed the feel of her skin baking even though she had put on sunscreen. 

When the distant melody of the ice cream man rumbled over the small park, everyone with children went up to buy ice cream, popsicles, and other tooth-rotting goodness. Holly treated Kairi and Lilet to Rainbow Pops and had a FudgeSicle herself. Then, they sat on the big towel and ate as fast as they could without getting brain freeze. Only after ice cream did they even think about having any real lunch (which Kairi put off for as long as possible because she didn’t want to go swimming in that cold lake). 

Either way, Kairi wound up going in though while Holly went for a walk around the lake. While Kairi was drying out on the towel and trying to warm up in the sun, Lilet built a sandcastle. Then, she asked the fateful words.

“Can I go play in the playground?”

“Of course, sweetheart. You know the rules.”

“Don’t talk to strangers. Yell for Mom if someone creepy comes around. Don’t fall down and do anything the Dad would do.”

Kairi smiled. “Spot on, angel. Go ahead, go play.” She rolled over and watched Lilet on the swings, going higher and higher, for a while. Baking in the warm sun, she soon dozed off with a smile frozen on her face. Holly was in her life, spoiling Lilet with ice cream like a good grandmother should. Sora was as wonderful as ever and Kairi was even beginning to think of having another child with him—just him, the perfect union between them. 

Life was so perfect. 

Holly woke her up. “Kairi, where’s Lilet?” Those words… those were the words that split Kairi’s world apart.

“Playing on the swings,” she mumbled. Her mind was still foggy with the heat of the sun and her sleep. 

Holly was quiet for a moment as if looking around. “Kairi,” she said finally. There was something in her voice that made Kairi’s heart begin to pound. “No she’s not.”

Kairi’s twilight-colored eyes snapped open and she sat up as if jerked by a string. That’s what she felt like—a marionette on a string and now they were all cut. She was trapped in a dream, in a nightmare. This couldn’t be happening. But, sure enough, the playground was empty. The swings weren’t even swaying. It looked like a scene from a horror movie… an empty playground, a warm summer breeze, distant laughter of children, and Holly’s voice coming in from far away.

Lilet was gone.

“LILET!”

“LILET!”

“LILET!”

…

They called the police. Well, to be more specific, Holly called the police. Kairi was too busy running through the park, deep into the lake, down the small beach, over the path that surrounded Moon Lake, recklessly and wildly searching for her child. The police were much smarter about it. They formed a massive search party and spread out, scouring the entire park until the sun sank below the horizon and the darkness destroyed their efforts. 

A strong handsome policeman put his hand on Kairi’s shoulder. He was not the one who had put the blanket around her shoulders and forced her to sit in the backseat of a cruiser and drink some water earlier when she had been wild with her panic. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Strife,” he said. “We’ll find your daughter, but we’ve done all we can for tonight. You should go home and try to get some rest.”

“How can I rest? My child is missing…”

He let out a sigh as if he had heard this before. “I know, but we’re going to need your help and you’ll be no use to us if you’re exhausted. Please, go home and try to get some sleep. There’s nothing else we can do tonight.”

Kairi nodded, but she still felt trapped in some kind of terrible dream. 

Holly took her by the hand. “Come on, Kairi. Let’s get you home. Do you want me to stay with you tonight?”

Kairi looked at her mother without really seeing her. “I need Sora.”

“Sora.” Holly’s face twisted slightly as if she wished she was enough for her daughter in her time of need, but she wasn’t now and she never had been. “Right, Sora.”

Kairi got into the passenger seat, letting her mother drive, and took out her cell phone. It was a miracle she even remembered his number or that he picked up since it was nearly eleven and Sora was by no means a night owl. He went to bed with the sun like a beautiful bird and the sun had sunk below the horizon long ago. But on the third ring, she heard his bleary voice and just broke down in tears. If she told Sora, this wouldn’t be just a bad dream anymore. If she told Sora that Lilet was gone, that would be admitting she really was.

“Sora,” she sobbed. 

“Kairi?” The sleep cleared from his voice immediately. “What’s wrong?”

She couldn’t do anything except cry for a long moment while Holly drove away from Moon Lake.

“Baby, talk to me. What happened?”

“L-Lilet…”

“What about Lilet?” Bless him, he was patient. He was her angel.

“Sora, I need you,” she whispered. 

“Consider me already on my way,” he said, “But first tell me what happened.”

“It’s Lilet… Sora, she’s gone.”

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	4. Strife, Hart, & Wise: Pt I

I am very annoyed. Someone left a review on Stolen Lives saying, “The author spelled Sora’s name wrong and was too lazy to change it.” I did not spell it wrong! I did that very purposefully and that really bugs me that someone would say that. Is that silly?

X X X

Sora Strife had always loved the night, especially summer nights… 

When he managed to stay up past sunset, that is. 

Now, driving nearly twenty miles over the speed limit in his hurry to get home, he had never felt so truly alone. The night was pressing down on his like an abyss, pitch-black. Not even the silvery moonlight was peeking out from behind the thick layer of cloud cover. It was like being in a tomb, trapped in a coffin, which of course led his mind on a downward spiraling trail to what could have happened to his dear little girl. He knew what could happen to lovely little girls who were alone in the world and his beautiful wife was a prime example of that. Hell, Lilet was the aftereffects of the terrible things that could happen. Sora shook himself and put on his high beams, not that the added light did anything to banish the darkness. It only pushed the night back a little farther from the cool glass windows. 

He was exhausted and his heart was pounding so hard it was almost like it was trying to beat its way out of his chest. He tightened his hands around the wheel until they were white and rolled down the window in an attempt to keep himself awake and alert and keep his mind from wandering down dark roads. The warm summer air on his face did nothing to make him feel better or chase away his demons. His head was full of Lilet’s smiling face, of her playing hide and seek, of her coming into the bathroom when he was shaving, of her looking so much like her mother. His eyes pricked with tears and a lump began to form in his throat. If he started crying, he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop so he turned on the radio and blasted himself out with the volume as high as it would go.

Then, finally, he was turning down familiar roads. Then, he saw his house, his home, sitting prominently in the middle of the block. Every light in the house was on—the front yard looked like the crack of dawn, the front walk was as bright as runway lights, and the windows glowed like big amber eyes in the dark—and there was an empty police cruiser sitting at the curb. 

At that moment, any chance of this being just a bad dream vanished. 

Sora parked in his driveway, got out, and hurried up to the front door. Inside, Kairi was lying on the couch with Lilet’s favorite stuffed bear in her arms. Her twilight-colored eyes were swollen and red from crying and her face was streaked with dirt. As if revealing vestiges of a happier time, the bridge of her nose and her shoulders were slightly sunburned. Sitting beside her on the sofa was Holly, gently stroking her back in an absent kind of way. She looked lost, unsure of how to comfort her daughter over the loss of a child. Her salt-and-pepper hair was loose around her face, making her look younger and even more lost, especially in her bright beach clothes. 

In the armchair Sora himself usually occupied was a kind-looking policeman with green watchful eyes and silvery moon-colored hair. Looking at him reminded Sora of the woman Kairi had said saved her so many years ago, the moon-faced woman who had called her ‘Doll’ and found her in that alley after she had been left for dead by her rapists. Was this the man in the moon sitting in the house, misplaced, having fallen out of the inky-black sky? Another moon guardian here to help Kairi in her time of need?

No. 

There was nothing ephemeral or blessed about this moon-white policeman sitting there like a shard of broken moon-stone-statue in Sora’s favorite chair. 

No.

There was no moon-white guardian come down from the heavens to help them get their child back.

No.

In the sky there was just a watchful moon while everyone was roiled with nightmares on the earth below and this policeman was just a man. 

Sora ignored both Holly and the officer and went right to Kairi’s side. She sat up when he approached as if Holly didn’t even exist, eyes filling with tears anew. She swamped him in her arms and he could feel every inch of her body shaking with the attempt to keep her tears at bay. He hugged her tightly, pulling her pain like little barbs beneath his skin. His throat felt tight and again his head filled with images of Lilet and Kairi that he couldn’t force back. 

When he spoke, his voice was hoarse and strained. “Baby,” he whispered. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her.” 

Kairi didn’t answer him. She just pressed even closer to him and sobbed her heart out, body shaking as if to break apart. Sora slid to his knees at her feet, holding her. He tried so hard to hold back his tears and pain, but Kairi’s sobs soaked into his ears, her tears into his skin, and her pain deep into his chest like a stone. His stomach clenched with ice, cold and solid, and he felt the knot in his throat move up into his mouth like something alive and just waiting to get out. His eyes burned, but he only squeezed them tightly shut. He couldn’t let himself break down. He just couldn’t.

…

Holly Hart rose from the couch while her daughter sobbed into her husband’s arms. It didn’t matter if Holly was there anyway. She had been sitting with Kairi since she called Sora, but she may have gone home for all the good it did. Kairi didn’t need Holly. She had never needed Holly. The only person she had ever truly needed was Sora Strife—her best friend, her beautiful boyfriend, her wonderful husband. Sora had taken Holly’s place in Kairi’s life a long time ago.

Wordlessly, Holly rose from the couch and went into the kitchen, pausing only to ask the policeman sitting in Sora’s chair if he would like some coffee. The policeman shook his head and averted his gaze from the crying parents. Holly shrugged her shoulders and went to the kitchen. It took her a while to find the coffeemaker and even longer to find the coffee, but she finally got it brewing. Even when the pot was finished, she was reluctant to return to the living room. She didn’t want to see her daughter sobbing or Sora holding Kairi. She didn’t want to see all the pictures of Lilet on the walls, on the mantle, on the coffee table, everywhere.

Holly poured milk and sugar into her coffee and went to stand at the window, looking out over the backyard. Even there she saw Lilet’s fingerprints—her swing set, the little orange flags marking the place for the pool, the bicycles leaning against the house, the soccer ball she played with so often with her father while her mother played referee. Holly turned away and sipped her coffee, trying to ignore the photograph of Lilet lying on the table—school photographs to be put into cards and sent out. Would Kairi send out those photographs now with a handwritten note saying—what?—by the way, my daughter is missing?

Holly took the photographs and slipped then into a kitchen drawer beside the forks and the spoons. No, she supposed Kairi wouldn’t be sending out the pictures and who knew if she ever would again. Holly was the first to actually give words to the fear that were eating them all alive: What if they never found Lilet?

…

Officer Riku Wise hated this. He hated being the one to sit with the family and make sure they didn’t do anything stupid. He wanted to be out, combing the streets and walking the beat and actively looking for this child. 

He cut his green eyes to Kairi’s mother, Holly Hart. He had heard that she demanded her daughter kill the child inside her when they found out she had conceived the night of her rape. Apparently, she had even gone to the hospital when Kairi’s water broke and screamed that the child be killed. Sora had been with Kairi in the delivery room, watching over her and protecting her as he had since she came out of her coma. 

Yes, Riku remembered these people even though he had been fresh out of the academy and not taking many cases other than routine ones (and rape was far from routine) when Kairi’s rape had rolled across the sheriff’s desk. He still remembered when one of the other officers finally brought in two suspects for questioning and revealed that they were the ones who had raped sixteen-year-old Kairi Hart. That had been nearly eleven months after her rape and Lilet had already been born. Riku couldn’t even imagine the fear she had felt in those months while the force was spinning their wheels.

He shifted his eyes back to the couple—Sora and Kairi Strife—watching the younger man’s strong back. Then again, maybe she had done alright. He still remembered seeing Sora in the station, demanding they look harder and not give up. Mainly, Riku remembered those eyes in that face—that innocent carved-by-angels face with those dangerous sky-blue eyes that showed such a wild array of emotions. No, he would never forget these people. Especially not now that he was sitting in their living room witnessing their private pain at the loss of their child.

He lowered his gaze and caught a glimpse of his silver hair from the corner of his eyes. Even now, months later, it still gave him a start. He had always heard that some people’s hair had ‘gone white overnight’ from something traumatic. Marie Antoinette’s hair was said to have turned white the night before her execution, but he had never really believed it. Then, he had taken a bullet on a case. The doctor’s didn’t think there was a chance he’d make it, but he did and when he woke up all his dark night-black hair had turned moon-white. Carefully, he plucked out a strand and scrutinized it—white hair from trauma and fear. He glanced at Sora and Kairi Strife. Would they wake up tomorrow with moon-white hair?

X X X

Kind of everyone’s perspective on what’s going on. And bit of a short chapter, but I can’t let too much happen just yet. Hang in there everyone! I know getting through the beginning is a little tedious, but if I can do it, you can do it.

Questions, comments, concerns?


	5. The Strife's Empty House

Okay, this chapter is a little like the last one. More character development. Read it! You can do it!

X X X

It had been one month since Lilet Strife’s disappearance. This morning, Sora was sitting at the kitchen table, alone with a cold cup of coffee in front of him, staring down at the calendar and the hopeless scribbling of a man obsessed across numerous notebooks. Not even the beautiful sunrise outside the windows could make him feel any batter even though he loved to watch the sun push up into the sky like an unfurling yellow tulip. He put his face in his hands, feeling his gaunt face and his cold dry skin. 

One month. One never-ending terrible nightmare month…

A month since Kairi had slept in their bed beside him, warm and passionate and comforting. She had taken to sleeping in Lilet’s empty bed now or on the floor beside it as if her presence alone could somehow bring their child back.

A month since they had played hide and seek together, enjoying Kairi’s plight when she couldn’t find him and could only find Lilet by cheating, since they had played soccer in the yard, and since Lilet had grinned at the prospect of a pool in their backyard. 

A month since Lilet had flounced into the bathroom to shave her cute hairless face with her father or lain in wait behind the shower curtain to scare him and then crying when her voice shouting, ‘Boo!’ made him cut himself with his razor. He had always made a big deal of it, letting her play doctor with band aids and his face.

A month since he had wrapped his family in a group hug, felt them in his arms. Now, when he hugged Kairi, she felt like empty clothing, so thin and tremulous that he hardly believed that she was still alive. He wondered what he looked like now too. 

Such happy times seemed so far away now… so painfully far away.

Wordlessly, Sora crossed off another day on the calendar, glared at the mess spread out on the table before him, and then sourly swept everything onto the floor. Why had this happened? Why had life chosen to deal his sweet Kairi another terrible blow as if she hadn’t suffered enough. No, Sora didn’t hurt less because Lilet wasn’t really his child. He loved her so much it was as if she had come from his own flesh and blood. Besides, he and Kairi were never going to tell her that Sora wasn’t her real father. 

Kairi appeared in the kitchen as if she was a ghost. “Today’s the day,” she whispered. 

“I know.”

“How can they just stop looking for her?!”

“It’s been thirty days,” Sora whispered.

Kairi made a pained sound deep in her chest as if her heart was breaking and hurried to the fridge, yanking it open to flood her face with cold air. Sora saw the tears running down her face. It felt like she was always crying anymore, like she was drowning in the water on her face. 

The phone rang. The sound was so sharp and terrifying that it may as well have been a gunshot. 

Sora snatched it up, not wanting to hear it ring again and see the pain rocket across Kairi’s face like a physical wound. “Hello?” he said and hated the way his voice sounded—like a child’s, lost and small and frail. He cleared his throat and spoke again, forcing strength up his throat. “Hello?”

“Mr. Strife? It’s Officer Riku Wise.”

Sora’s heart leaped into his throat, choking him. He had both desired and dreaded this call. “Did you find her?”

A few heartbeats passed.

“No.”

Breath Sora didn’t know he had been holding rushed out of his lungs. What should he say now? Thank God or Oh…?

“I’m sorry. I just wanted to let you know that I won’t give up. I’m going to keep looking for her whenever I can.”

Sora nodded, eyes burning. He could feel Kairi watching him, hardly breathing, dreading and wanting. “Yes. Thank you.”

“I’m sorry,” the policeman said again.

“I have to go.”

“I understand.”

They hung up.

“D-did they find her?” Kairi whispered. Her voice was so small like a voice that most people used in a funeral parlor to speak of the dead.

Sora shook his head. “No,” he forced out. The words were like stones and he was drowning. They were pulling him down until he couldn’t breathe anymore. “That was Officer Wise. He said he’s going to keep looking.”

Kairi made that sound again, that heartbroken noise deep inside her chest as if something had broken loose and was rattling around against her bones. She went back to the fridge and stuck her head in. Then, she took out the bottle of grape juice—Lilet’s grape juice—and dumped it in the trash. It had long ago gone bad and Sora knew why she was throwing it out, but either way, he suddenly felt a crushing need to get out of his house, to escape the horror that had become his life. Kairi stood staring into the trash for a long moment, but she did not take the bottle back out. Sora rose from the table, gathered up the papers he had thrown onto the floor, and quickly walked away. Kairi heard his car start up, but she did not follow him or even go to the window to watch him drive away. Instead, she closed the trash, put her face in her hands, and sobbed.

…

Riku Wise couldn’t say exactly what made him neglect his paperwork during his lunch break which was when he normally did it, not even in hindsight years later. Instead, he parked his cruiser in front of the alley where Kairi Hart, now Strife, had been raped all those years ago. But he did and he got out and walked down the grey sidewalk, watching his shoes as he carefully stepped over the cracks lest he break his mother’s back. He had always been a silly superstitious child, but loving, yes, so loving and hopeful. He brought home everything, hoping to save it, from kittens to insects to people as he got older.

He stopped at the mouth of the alley and looked down into the darkness. What had it been like for her? He had seen other girls who had been raped and impregnated and few of them had turned out like Kairi, so loving and happy. Was it because of Sora or was Lilet just endearing by nature even in the womb? Riku touched the cold rough brick and whispered, “I hope one day I get to meet her.”

He turned around, hoping that—miraculously as if she was a spirit made of white mist that appeared here suddenly and often—she would be standing behind him with that smile on her face. The strange woman had saved several people in this alley, not a record number, but enough that she deserved some merit. Besides, any time a life was saved it meant something to someone somewhere. It was almost as if she was an angel station at the mouth of this specific alley, watching over the people who were mugged and raped and beaten and abused, but Riku was alone on the street and he supposed she was only a regular human who just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

He touched his moon-silver hair. 

Then again, maybe there were some angels on this earth that watched over them, but either way there was none here now. He was alone and Lilet Strife was still lost. With a sigh, Riku got back into his cruiser and drove away, watching the dark alley vanish in his rearview mirror. Then, he saw her. She came out of nowhere as if made of moonlight and her face was perfect porcelain-doll pretty. He wanted to turn around but, over the radio, the dispatcher called him in—domestic dispute—and Riku had to leave no matter how badly he wanted to turn back.

…

Holly Hart was standing in what used to be Kairi’s room. It was still empty because Holly had never found anything sufficient to fill it. She went to the window and pushed back the curtains, looking out on the butter-yellow world beyond the glass. 

It looked like a dream, a beautiful blissful dream. 

Down the street, her neighbor was out with her children, playing Frisbee in the front yard. Holly could hear them laughing from here. Everyone else still had their children, their grandchildren, their families intact. Why did Holly’s family suffer so much? 

She touched her stomach, touched the scar there that she hid like a black secret that she hated because that was exactly what it was. C-section, she told anyone who happened to unluckily glimpse it, but that wasn’t the truth. 

…

To torment herself with her fuck-up, Kairi drove to Moon Lake and went to the playground where Lilet had vanished. She chose her daughter’s favorite swing and sat down, idly swinging back and forth as the sun beat down on her face and shoulders. She watched the other mother’s with their children and the children with their fathers and the grandparents laughing blissfully. The ice cream man drove into the park and everyone but her bought ice cream. Kairi just sat there, watching, for what felt like eternity. Then, she started to cry—big gasping sobs that echoed across the park.

“Mommy, do you hear that?”

“What, baby?”

“That’s the sound of a heart breaking.”

The smooth buttery sunlight spread across the ground, happy and uncaring, as Kairi’s cries chased the other people down to the lakeside to swim and play in the sand. Alone, she sat on her daughter’s favorite swing and cried her broken heart out into the golden sand beneath her feet. Someone touched her back and she expected to hear that strange voice from so long ago, ‘Doll, are you alright?’ but it wasn’t the moon-white woman. This wasn’t just a nightmare.

“Mrs. Strife?” It was the moon-haired policeman, Riku Wise. “Can I take you home?”

She shook her head. “I need to find my baby.”

“I know, Mrs. Strife.”

“No, you don’t know,” she snapped. “You don’t know anything, you stupid cop! Just leave me alone!” She bolted to her feet and pushed off into the woods behind her, branches whipping at her face and exposed arms and sandaled feet caught up with roots and vines. 

She didn’t know for how long she was running, but eventually she stumbled out at the edge of the lake. The water was ice cold and Kairi suddenly had the desire to dive in and just swim until she couldn’t swim anymore. She wanted to sink beneath the cold water and drown. Maybe, then she’d find Lilet.

As if struck, her heart lurched. No, Lilet wasn’t dead. Lilet couldn’t be dead! She was just a baby, just a child! There was no way she could be dead, no way! But the seed had been planted and now it festered there in her brain.

…

Sora was sitting on the couch at home, looking at Lilet’s picture in his long-fingered hands. Wordlessly, Kairi took off her shoes and took careful aching steps towards him. For a moment, she just stood there, looking at her husband holding the photograph of the child that wasn’t his but he loved like his own. Then, she tore it from his hands and slammed it down so hard on the floor that the frame broke and the glass shattered like stars falling from the sky. 

“Kairi?!”

“She’s gone,” Kairi snarled. 

He stood up as if yanked by an invisible string. “Don’t you say that.”

“She’s dead! Sora, she’s dead!” Kairi screamed in his face, breaking apart her and breaking apart him. “She’s dead!”

“Don’t say that!” His blow came out of nowhere, sharp and stinging across her face. 

Kairi slumped to her knees, clutching her face. He hadn’t hit her hard, just enough to startle her, but it stung none the less. The glass form the broken frame cut into her legs and feet.

“I’m sorry, Kairi,” Sora whispered and got down on his knees beside her. He pushed some glass away and then set the picture down on the coffee table. “But, please, don’t say that.”

“Sora,” Kairi sobbed. “What if she is? What if she’s dead?”

Sora hugged her carefully and she suddenly felt how slender his body was. Had he been eating? Had she been eating? “She’s not dead. She’s alive, Kairi,” he whispered. “She can’t be dead. If she’s dead now, then why would she ever have been born?”

“Maybe she wasn’t supposed to have been born,” Kairi whispered and the words tasted like poison. She hadn’t thought this way since she had first found out she was pregnant by rape. 

“Don’t say that,” he whispered. 

“If I hadn’t been raped, Lilet never would have happened,” she said. “Was I supposed to be raped?”

Sora didn’t have anything to say to that so he only held her in his strong-thin arms, cradling her against his chest. Kairi listened to his heartbeat and wondered if Lilet was meant to happen. Maybe, Lilet was never meant to be born and this was God’s way of taking her back. She buried her face in Sora’s chest until her tears dried on her face. Then, they cleaned up the glass and the blood from Kairi’s cut feet. They gathered all the photographs of Lilet and put them on the kitchen table and Kairi lit a white candle. It was a shrine, a tomb, in the middle of their house. 

Lilet had happened and this was their proof.

X X X

Okay, that was your last chapter of character development. Next chapter, I swear you’re getting some hardcore plot. 

Questions, comments, concerns?


	6. Sunrise Town and Sunset City

I don’t normally put review replies in here, but I can’t contact Anon directly, so…

 **Anon** (since I figured that stood for Anonymous and I wouldn’t be able to find you on here): The reason I label this with Kingdom Hearts characters while my plots are completely original is because I suffer from something weird. I need the characters to be pre-created otherwise they tend to all handle the situations the way I would. My original characters tend to lean towards my personality and I have no idea why. For some reason, if I write with FanFiction characters, they act separate and different from the way I would handle the situation.

Like in Stolen Lives, if I was in Kairi’s position, I wouldn’t have gone along following clues. I would have pushed Franny against the wall and demanded she tell me what was going on. And the moment I found out my husband had been tormenting Sora, I would have killed him flat out and burned the house down to cover it up—none of this running around and escaping and seeking safety. And the kids would have been dead the moment they came out of the womb. 

For some reason, using Kingdom Hearts characters make the story unwind differently. So, that’s why.

…

A bunch of skips here in the beginning, everyone, but after that it’s straight story. We’re finally in the meat of things so all your waiting is sort of at an end. So, read on, people! Read on! And REVIEWS for this story are so awesome! You are all being wonderful reviewers! *passes out cookies*

X X X

Everyone had forgotten Lilet Strife. It was as if she had never existed, never happened, but for her parents, she had become everything. Kairi used to call Holly once a week, but now she didn’t spare a moment for her mother. Sora had never worked much, choosing to spend time with his family and friends, but everyone stopped hearing from Sora at all. They almost feared that their friend was dead and a few brave souls even went over to the Strife house a few times, but no one was ever home. The house was empty now, but it had been empty since Lilet vanished.

…

Kairi Strife kept the creased photograph of her daughter in her bra, close to her heart. She didn’t know why she and Sora had started doing what the police had stopped. She showed around the photograph and put up posters, asking anyone and everyone if they had seen her daughter. Some people said they had, but it never came of anything. It was as if Lilet had vanished off the face of the earth. 

Kairi came home disappointed each day and lay in her child’s empty bed until Sora came home. She felt like a drug addict—eyes glazed, mouth slack, body shutting down. She didn’t kiss Sora anymore even though his eyes looked at her as if he would die to feel her arms around him, but Kairi wouldn’t so much as touch him. 

The loss of Lilet had destroyed her. 

The loss of Lilet had destroyed everything.

…

Sora had taken to long showers. The warm water was nothing like being held in Kairi’s arms, but it was the best he could get. He didn’t know what made him think to look in the next town over. Maybe because their town was so small and everyone knew everyone else and not a soul had seen Lilet on the day she disappeared. It stood to reason that whoever had stolen her had taken her to another town, another city, somewhere else entirely. So, without telling Kairi, the next day he vowed to go into the next city and pass around her picture. 

Maybe someone had seen her there.

He nestled in the warm water’s embrace, enjoying the beat of the shower on his head and shoulders. He scrubbed himself viciously as if he could scour the vestiges of Lilet from his skin until the bar of soap was nothing but a sliver. Finally, he got out of the shower, dried off, and crawled into his cold empty bed. 

…

The next morning, the Strife parents had a quiet breakfast together. Then, Sora left without saying where he was going and Kairi watched him from the window until she was sure he was gone. Then, she got into her own car and started to drive as well. They both had thought of looking in other cities for Lilet. Maybe, if they had told each other what they were doing, some things could have been avoided, but they didn’t because they didn’t want to give each other false hope. So, the Strife parents drove away from Moon Valley and headed off in different directions—Sora went east into Sunrise Town while Kairi went west into Sunset City. 

…

Sunrise Town was cheerful and quaint and buzzing with activity as if true to its name just off the highway so that it got a nice tourist flow. On Main Street there were numerous colorful shops and stands selling fresh fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Children were out on bicycles, laughing and racing. Mothers had hung out clean laundry to dry and the air was full of the scent of breakfast cooking. Fathers fetched their papers and waved as they went off to work. One man caught his daughter up in his big arms and kissed her chubby red cheeks and Sora felt a pang of agony in his heart. 

He parked at the curb and got out with his creased photograph of Lilet. He stopped a jogger and asked her his worn out line.

She scrutinized the picture but shook her head as he had been fearing. Then, surprisingly and helpfully, she smiled at him and continued jogging in place as she spoke. “I don’t know. You should ask Roxas Donovan. He owns the Peter Pan Diner on the corner and everybody goes there so he had the catbird seat of the town. He knows everything that goes on here.”

“Thanks,” Sora said and turned to go.

The jogger’s voice followed him down the street. “I hope you find her!”

His heart began to pound in his chest. No one had said that to him and to heart it warmed his aching broken heart. He walked down Main Street, looking for the diner she had described. It was not at all difficult to find. 

The Peter Pan Diner was one of the usual 80s-style mirrored structures Sora saw in many towns or alongside highways with a big sign and a massive red arrow pointing down at the building. Surprisingly enough, it had a giant figure of Peter Pan standing on the roof with his hands on his hips and his head tipped back as if to crow with the words Peter Pan lit up in Broadway-style lights on either side of him. Beneath his feet was a big neon sundae with three flavors and a cherry on top. The parking lot was relatively full of cars ranging from clunking rusty hunks-of-junk to hotrods to mothering minivans. It seemed the Peter Pan Diner appealed to everyone. 

Sora pushed open the glass door, holding it open for a small family coming out with four noisy kids. He smiled at them, trying to keep his eyes form tearing up. Wordlessly, the mother passed him a tissue as she passed—such a small gesture that meant so much that it almost crippled his defenses. He couldn’t even thank her because his voice was so heavy, but she seemed to understand and smiled at him either way. 

Inside, the diner was full of life and happiness. The booths were covered in sleek Peter-Pan-green and the walls were decorated with all relics of Peter Pan’s era—posters from the Broadway plays, movie posters, a finely-made silk costume, images of glowing Tinker Bell and of Peter’s sneaky shadow and even a photograph of the author, J.M. Barrie, so big on one wall so that his smile filled the room. The lamps that hung over each table had faeries sitting on them though Tinker Bell herself was only sitting on the lamp above the cash register. The waitresses wore green uniforms and a few even had feathers in their hair like Peter kept in his hat. Behind the low bar, tending everyone sitting at it with a gleaming smile and laughing blue eyes, was the man Sora assumed to be Roxas Donovan by the way he moved as if he had been here his entire life. 

Sora sat on one of the stools at the counter and waited until he was noticed. 

“Hello, I haven’t seen your face here before. Tourist?” 

Sora shook his head. “Are you Roxas Donovan?” 

The man’s blue eyes narrowed a little, but he nodded. “Yes, what can I do for you?”

Sora slid the photograph of his daughter across the counter. “Have you seen this child?” 

Roxas set aside everything he was doing and lifted the photograph, cradling it in his long-fingered hands as if it was a small injured animal. Then, he passed the image back to Sora and said with absolute seriousness, “Who are you?”

“Her father,” Sora whispered and the words burned like fire in his throat. 

“If I have seen her, how am I to know that she wants to be found?” 

“I’m not an abusive husband pursuing a wife that has run away with my child,” Sora snapped and cut right to the chase. “Lilet disappeared one month ago from our home in Moon Valley.”

Roxas purposefully wiped the counter. “I remember hearing that. You are Sora Strife?”

Sora nodded.

Roxas let out a deep heavy sigh. “I did see her.”

“What?!” Sora practically leaped to his feet. “When?! Where?! How did she look?! Was she okay?!”

Roxas poured out a glass of water and handed it to Sora. “Sit down and I’ll tell you everything.”

Sora did and eagerly awaited what Roxas would say. 

“I didn’t know she was still missing. The encounter was so normal that I just didn’t think about it,” Roxas paused as if apologizing, but Sora waved him on. “It’s well known that I will help anyone who needs it and I have a few regulars that come to me when they need to. She came in with a woman and had some dessert. Then, they both left.”

Sora’s eyes misted. “When was this?” 

“Two weeks ago. I’m sorry. I should have contacted the police, but I had other… things going on that I needed to take care of and she looked alright, not distressed or beaten or anything, so I just left it alone.”

Sora’s head was still reeling with the knowledge that someone had seen his daughter, his Lilet, alive, only two weeks ago. His heart swelled to bursting and he smiled at Roxas though it was strained. “She’s alive,” he whispered.

Roxas’s face looked pale and stressed, like he was suddenly spread too thin. “I’d like to help you. Will you leave me this picture?”

“Why would you want to help me?” Sora asked.

Roxas’s blue eyes looked dark, like slate. “I know what it’s like to lose a child, not the way you have. I lost my baby to leukemia.” He looked around the diner as if seeing something different. “Her favorite thing in the world was Peter Pan. This is my dedication to her.”

Sora looked up at the faeries on the lamps. “She would have liked this,” he whispered.

Roxas nodded, his eyes far-seeing. 

Sora wrote his cell phone number on the back of the photograph along with his name and passed it into Roxas’s cold hands. “Thank you,” Sora whispered.

Roxas smiled and said simply, “Believe.” Then, Sora stepped out of the shrine to Roxas Donovan’s dead daughter, got back into his car, and returned to the bleak life that had become a shrine to his own lost child. But the possibility of her being alive lifted his spirits considerably to the point that he found himself singing along with the radio. Then, he came to the brutal question that sucked the happiness from his face. Should he tell Kairi?

…

Sunset City was a bleak and grey city with so many lights turned out that it looked as if it would only ever be truly alive during the day. It looked like a nighttime city. No one was about on the streets and the shops looked tightly closed. There was a lot of trash in the gutter and quite a few broken windows. Wordlessly, Kairi roved the streets in search of an open shop or someone to show her picture to. The photograph of Lilet in her bra was heavy like a weight and Kairi wished she could lay it back behind the glass of the frame where it belonged. She wished she had her daughter’s real face to gaze upon, but she didn’t. Lilet was still gone, gone for so long it was as if she was never coming back. It was as if she had never existed, never happened.

Finally, Kairi met someone on the street—a man with obsidian dark skin and clever birdlike eyes. 

“Please,” Kairi begged and pulled out the photograph. “Have you seen this child?”

He glanced at the photograph and Kairi saw light in the back of his dark eyes. Then, his gaze roved her body like a physical touch. “What’s my incentive?” he asked.

As if struck, Kairi recoiled, but she remembered that light of recognition in his eyes. “What do you want?”

“Your wedding ring. That’s a nice rock.”

Kairi fingered the band. It felt like a choice—a choice between Lilet and Sora. And what could she choose? Could she forget her child and move on with the husband she still possessed and loved deep beneath all this hurt? Or would she forever be trapped in the void where Lilet had been, unable to claw her way free? She twisted it around and around, around and around. Then, she pulled it off and started to hand it over.

The man with the birdlike eyes reached out eagerly, but she held it back.

“Tell me first,” Kairi whispered.

“The kid? I saw her with the whore that works the corner of Sea and Bride, White-Doll, I think her name is, but don’t hold me to that. I’m not in the business of buying their custom. Now, the ring?”

Kairi handed it over, suddenly warm and cold all at once. She watched the man walk away and then turned to face the corner he had jerked his head at. Kairi walked over and looked up at the green cross of streets—Sea and Bride Roads. She tried to imagine her Lilet standing here, holding the hand of a whore with their thick make-up and their high heels. Would Lilet have been afraid? Even more puzzling, how the fuck had a seven-year-old gotten into a city like this? But Kairi understood why no one had reported her whereabouts to the police. There was a chance that he little girl was still alive somewhere in this godforsaken night-city.

“Lilet!” Kairi shouted, listening to her voice echo back to her. 

Not a soul stirred on the street or in the buildings even though she felt eyes watching her every move. If she wanted any answers, she was going to have to come back at night when this place was alive. Maybe in less conspicuous clothing with cash lining her pockets and pepper spray in her hand, just in case.

“Lilet!” She screamed again, like she had the day Lilet had vanished. “Lilet!” 

But she didn’t scour the streets. She felt giddy and high with this discovery as she floated back to her car on light feet with her hand grievously empty. She wondered if Sora would notice her wedding ring was gone. No, probably not. She hardly saw him anymore, they barely spoke, and she rarely touched him with her white dove hands, but that led her to another troubling thought. Did she dare tell Sora that there was a chance their daughter was alive in this seedy city?

X X X

By the way, the Peter Pan Diner is a real diner. I have no idea what it looks like on the inside, but the outside I tried to make to the letter because it’s a really cool looking place. If you google it, you’ll get a picture. Just thought I’d throw that out there. 

So, Sora and Kairi both found people that saw their daughter. What the heck is going on?

And, Anon, if you have an account, feel free to message me. If not, then I guess we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing.

Questions, comments, concerns?


	7. The Peter Pan Diner and White-Doll

You know, cartoons have really gone downhill. What’s all this junk on television nowadays. Fanboy and Chum Chum, Zevo-3, T.U.F.F. Puppy, Chowder, etc. No offense to anyone who watches any of those, but man what happened to the cartoons?! What happened to Hey Arnold, Rugrats, Danny Phantom, Teen Titans, etc. All those shows with plot and animation that looked like real people or at least people that haven’t been radiated by a nuclear power plant? I shudder to think what will be on TV when I have kids. 

Ok, now that I got that out of my system…

X X X

There was only velvety pitch-black night outside the cool glass of the window. A faint breath of air blew in through the open windows of the bedroom, stirring the soft gauzy curtains. Sora was still lying awake in his bed, alone and snarled in the light cotton sheets since he had been tossing and turning for hours, when he heard Kairi get up and sneak out of the house. He went to the window and watched her taillights vanish down the road into the dark velvety night. Then, cold, he slipped back beneath the covers and lay there until he heard her sneak back in. Only then did he manage to sleep though there were only a few hours of night left for him. 

…

Kairi waited until she was certain Sora was asleep, not that she would ever know he had never been asleep the first night she snuck out in search of Lilet’s cold trail. She drove to Sunset City, feeling jittery with the thought of finding her child or even finding a clue of her baby’s whereabouts. As she had suspected, the seedy ugly city came alive at night. All the lights were lit up and it looked something like Las Vegas—all sugary candied lights, beautiful and hideous people, loud cars, louder music, and conflict. Everywhere she looked, there were people shouting and fighting, screaming at each other, and she could hear a distant baby crying. She clutched her jacket closed over her chest even though it was a warm night and hurried to the corner of Sea and Bride Roads where the bird-eyed man had said he had seen her daughter with the prostitute named White-Doll. 

There were two women standing there and neither looked like her name was White-Doll. The first had a lot of night-black hair and gleaming dark eyes. She looked more like a bird of prey, like a Raven or a Crow, infinitely nothing with the word white in its name. The other was colorless in her face and eyes and hair like some kind of ghost, but she made up for it with brightly colored clothing. She had a naturalistic kind of beauty, like a flower or a constellation in the night sky. She didn’t look like a doll. 

“Excuse me, but is either of you White-Doll?” Kairi ventured, regardless of her feeling toward them. She felt like a small child in this city, lost and frightened among so many people who clearly knew these dark streets well.

The first woman blew out a lot of smoke in Kairi’s face and then asked, “What do you want with White-Doll?”

“I’m looking for my daughter.” Kairi started to pull the photograph from her bra. 

But the first woman barked a loud hacking smoker’s laugh. “White-Doll ain’t nobody’s baby,” she said. 

“No,” Kairi said quickly. “I’m looking for my daughter, Lilet. She’s seven and she’s been missing almost a month now.”

“And you think White-Doll has something to do with it?” The second’s voice was much softer and kinder, like she used to be someone before she came to work on this corner. 

Kairi wet her lips. “I was here earlier and a man told me that he had seen my daughter with a woman on this corner. He thought her name was White-Doll.”

“White-Doll’s not that kind of person,” the second said softly. “She never would have—”

“You shut your mouth!” the first woman snapped and flicked her cigarette at her friend.

The woman flinched and clammed up, casting her eyes down at the ground. 

“Please,” Kairi whispered and pulled some money from her pocket. “Please, tell me.”

Both women eyed the money and the second woman glanced at the first as if asking permission. Finally, the first woman nodded, lit up another cigarette, and turned away. The second woman took the money from Kairi and tucked it into her cleavage.

“White-Doll is a prostitute, like us, but she’s… she’s different. Some nights, the johns she goes with are found dead the next morning and I know she’s been involved with the police a few times, but they can never pin anything on her. I think she sleeps with the officers or something. Can I see that picture of your daughter?”

Kairi handed over the creased photo of Lilet and bit her lip while the woman looked at it. 

“Yes, I remember her. White-Doll found her wandering around this city. Bird-Man-Bill had stolen her from some high-class neighborhood, was paid a hefty amount to take her, too, I remember. He was really loose with the tips that night even though I didn’t blow him real good. I had a cut on my tongue that was really hurting me, you see. I heard the little girl was supposed to have been killed, but Bird-Man just couldn’t do it so he dumped her on the streets here. Hell, a cute little kid like that, it wouldn’t have been long before somebody snatched her up like a dog with a steak, but White-Doll took her in before anybody could get their hands on her. I don’t know anything after that, honest. But White-Doll must have had her for a few days because she didn’t come out to tend the corner with us and then the kid was gone. She came back out and went to work like nothing had happened.”

“So, White-Doll has my daughter? Please, tell me where she is!” Kairi reached out as if to grab the woman and shake her, but the hooker shied away with practiced ease. 

“I don’t know. Nobody knows where White-Doll goes, but she must have some kind of house somewhere because she’s always taking in runaways and stray kids, those urchins whose parents don’t even want them. White-Doll loves everybody.”

Kairi tried to catch her breath and then forced out, “Then, you haven’t seen Lilet or White-Doll?”

The woman looked at her sadly. “No. I haven’t seen the kid with White-Doll for more than three weeks, but I saw White-Doll a few days ago. She had a bruise on her face and I thought that was weird because no one ever hurts White-Doll. She’s too beautiful and childlike. People that buy her custom love her because she’s so frail-looking and innocent, you know, like a doll.”

“You don’t know anything else?” Kairi whispered.

“If you wanted to give me more money, I could make something up, but no.”

Kairi handed her a few more dollars and whispered, “Thank you for your time.”

“Don’t mention it. If I see White-Doll, do you want me to pass on that you were looking for her?”

Kairi thought for a moment, but finally nodded. “Yes. My name is Kairi Strife and my daughter’s name is Lilet.”

The woman nodded and then turned her attention back to the people passing her, smiling and flaunting her body.

Kairi wandered the streets, enjoying the lights that had pushed the all-encompassing darkness of night so far away. Her head was spinning. Lilet had been here within the week she had vanished, stolen by some man named Bird-Man-Bill and protected, maybe, by the prostitute White-Doll. Was all that true? Could it be right? Lilet was alive somewhere and unhurt, right? She scrubbed her face with her hands and tilted her face up into the night, trying to pick out the stars, but they were blocked out by the neon lights of Sunset City. Then, she returned to her car and sat behind the wheel for a long moment, watching the two women working their corner and gazing at the seedy broken-down buildings. She tried to imagine Lilet here, but her thoughts quickly spun out of her control. 

Lilet had been here.

Lilet had been here!

And she had missed her.

Kairi broke down and cried her heart out into her hands. Then, she pulled herself together and went home to Sora, who was still lying awake in the dark and listening for her to come home. She didn’t know that he had been awake, wondering why she was sneaking out in the dead of night. He wouldn’t ask her though. No, he trusted her far more than that. 

…

Officer Riku Wise was working another late night. It felt like case after case had been heaped on him today and he was exhausted, mentally and physically just exhausted. He didn’t’ want to deal with anymore tragedies, not today, not tonight.

He was driving by the alley, slowly, looking for the strange moon-pale woman with no name on file though he knew she had been involved in more than a few cases. This must have been his third time cruising past the alleyway and still she did not appear there like a ghost lying in wait. Finally, he gave up and moved on down the street into the night, but he watched the rearview mirror as he drove, just in case she appeared, but she didn’t.

…

Roxas Donovan was closing up the Peter Pan Diner for the night, wordlessly turning off the faery lights and flipping the closed sign to open. As he worked, he heard a small knock at the door, as quiet as a mouse begging to be let into the church. Wiping his hands on a towel, Roxas went and opened the door. Standing outside in the night like a wraith was a skinny teen, maybe fourteen, with raven hair and big blue eyes. She had all the trademarks of a street kid—filthy ragged clothes, chewed fingernails, chopped hair, dark bags beneath her eyes, and that nervousness as if anyone would hurt her for no reason at all other than that she was breathing.

“Um, hi, are you Roxas?” she asked, but her voice was like wind, so soft and silent. 

He heard that a lot, proving that there were too many hurt people on the streets coming to his diner for help. “Yes. Who sent you?”

“W-White-Doll. She said I’d be alright here.”

He smiled. “She was right. Please, come in. Would you like some dessert?”

There was disbelief and surprise in her face, but she nodded. Roxas got her a piece of apple pie from the case, heaped vanilla ice cream on top of it, and covered it in whipped cream and caramel sauce. Then, he passed it to her with a fork and a glass of water. She watched him for a moment over her melting ice cream, suspicious and nervous, but finally lowered her lantern-like eyes and dug in. She ate like she was starving and while she finished dessert, Roxas grilled a burger in the back. When he put the juicy thing in front of her, she looked shocked and plainly asked, “What do you want for this?”

Roxas was used to this and he knew exactly what to say… Well, sometimes, each of the people he saw passing through here via White-Doll or other had their own case and story. With this young woman, he went with the standard and pretended to be concentrating on something else when he spoke nonchalantly. “How about your story?”

She looked surprised, as if no one had ever asked her for her story in return for kindness, and she finally shook her head, dark hair sticking to the summer sweat on her thin neck. “No. I left all that behind me. How about I tell you my name?”

“I’d settle for that,” Roxas said and poured himself a glass of water. He took a long patient drink while he waited. 

She sat there, staring at her food for a long time and he saw her throat working furiously as she built up courage. Then, she shook her head and asked, “Why is there so much Peter Pan in this place?”

“My daughter loved Peter Pan.”

“And you made this place for her?”

“Yes, but I didn’t build it until after her death.”

“She’s dead?” the girl whispered.

Roxas nodded. “I find that everyone has lost someone.”

“Peter Pan most of all,” the girl said. 

“Why do you say that?” Roxas asked, honestly curious because he had never thought Peter Pan unlucky. Hell, he had envied Peter Pan for his perfect world and his flight and his faeries. 

“He doesn’t have a mother and he loves Wendy, but she leaves his Neverland to grow up and take all his Lost Boys with her. Peter’s all alone in his perfect world.”

“It’s not perfect then is it?”

She shook her head and took a bite of her burger, chewing as if she wanted to savor this moment. 

“How long has your world been like that?”

“Two years, since my mother remarried. I hate her new husband. He hits me and my brother.”

“Where’s your brother?”

Tears flooded out of her eyes. “That’s why I left. He killed him, beat him to death, but my mom helped him hide the body in our basement beneath the floor and then had concrete poured over it. She helped him cover up my brother’s death! What if he had killed me?” She put her face in her hands and sobbed like something truly broken. 

Roxas waited for her to come back and she finally did.

“I’ve got to tell someone, right? Is that the right thing to do?”

“Yes,” he murmured. “Do you have someone you can call? Family or friends?”

“I don’t know… I’ve been gone a while.”

“Do you want to try?”

She swallowed, throat working again. “Yeah. Can I use your phone?”

“Of course,” Roxas said with a smile. 

While she was calling and talking and crying, Roxas went outside to where he knew White-Doll would be waiting. She was standing in the parking lot in faded worn-out jeans and a plain black jacket tied at the waist with a white satin scarf that she liked to wear over her face and hair. Roxas had given the scarf to her except it used to have pale rose embroidery on one corner, but White-Doll had picked it out. She hated the blood-colored flowers flaunting and pretending they were beautiful when they were so ugly and sick. Roses reminded her of a lot of people. Here in the empty parking lot, she didn’t look like a prostitute from a worthless dark city. She looked like a goddess, moonlight shimmering on her pale hair and white face. 

“Hey,” he called into the darkness. 

She turned, eyes bright and smiling in the night. “Yes?”

“If you follow them, why don’t you come in?”

“I don’t want to send you anyone who doesn’t want help. If they go in and ask for your help, then I know they want it and won’t just take advantage of you,” she explained. Then, she looked up at the moon and let out her breath in a sigh. “I always wish there had been someone like me to help me when I was so lost.”

“I don’t think there’s anyone in this world like you,” Roxas said.

She smiled. “There’s you,” she said and then she was gone into the night like a wisp of white mist.

Roxas returned into the Peter Pan Diner and waited patiently for the girl to get off the phone to her family. When she came out, she was grinning and all traces of the grief of her life had been erased from her face. “My grandmother’s coming to get me.” Then, hesitantly, she asked, “Can I wait here for her, please?”

Roxas smiled. “Of course. I’ll even wait with you.”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling beautifully. Then, surprisingly, she went to the window and looked up at the moon and he saw her lips form the words, “Thank you White-Doll,” though he was too far away to hear her voice. 

Roxas smiled and looked out the window at the glowing white face of the moon. 

…

White-Doll walked home to Sunset City, to the corner where she belonged. Jackie and Amber were working their corner, laughing like crows over a rotting body and waltzing like the ugly-dead-beautiful-blood roses she hated so much. Everything looked different in this light. During the day, Jackie was just a smoker and Amber was just a skinny colorless girl. Here, beneath the night sky and in the neon of the strip, they were something almost beautiful but still hidden in the underbelly like solitary orchids blooming in the dry waste of the world. White-Doll walked up to them, enjoying only the warm air and none of the sights that greeted her. 

“Hey, Doll, someone was here looking for you. Something about her daughter,” night-black and dark-eyed day-smoker night-goddess Jackie said in her surely smoker’s voice. 

“White-Doll, a woman named Kairi Strife was looking for her daughter, Lilet,” colorless yet beautifully-dressed slender young Amber said softly. She picked at her cracked knuckled. 

“Lilet?” White-Doll said and her heart leaped in her chest. “I sent her home three weeks ago. What do you mean, looking for her daughter?”

“I guess she never came home. She’s been missing for a month,” Amber said. 

White-Doll’s heart skipped a few beats. 

What? 

What?!

She had specifically walked that seven-year-old child into Roxas’s arms in the safety of the Peter Pan Diner. How could she have not made it home to her parents? Even worse, how had her mother managed to find White-Doll when she tried so hard to remain under the radar? Wordlessly, White-Doll pushed between her two friends and raced to her apartment. She had to get in a call to Roxas—right now! Actually, preferably, ten minutes ago! 

But White-Doll never got the chance.

Bird-Man-Bill was waiting for her just inside the narrow hall leading to her apartment. White-Doll only had time to see his flinty bird-like eyes before he smashed her in the face and darkness wrapped her in its tight clammy hands and swept her away.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	8. Strife, Hart, & Wise: Pt II

I put a poll in my profile to see which ending for my Meth Awareness story, “Not Even Once,” everyone liked best, but I keep forgetting to check it! I wish it would tell my email when people voted. Raaawr!

X X X

The people of Sunset City weren’t in the practice of calling the police or the ambulance, but someone called for White-Doll. It was the sight of her beautiful moonlit white body lying on the filthy green carpet with the red spreading out from her face like the petals of a rose. No one could have turned away from that sight, not even the hardest of hearts, so someone called an ambulance for White-Doll and the screaming of the sirens cased the people of Sunset City into the seedy buildings like roaches hiding in the face of too much light. 

…

_‘Mommy, I’m not gone.’_

The sound came through the silent night like a crash of thunder and Kairi woke with a start in Lilet’s empty bed. Her feet were cold, sticking out from beneath the short child-sized coverlet, and pale silvery moonlight was streaming in like water through the window through the misty white curtains. She had a chill hovering above her skin, an unsettled feeling in the pit of her stomach. She sat up, gathering the covers against her chest and peered through the darkness. What was here? Was she alone?

Someone was standing in the threshold of the doorway—a thin silky silhouette that no light came through, a frail black shadow like an empty dress of black silk hanging on a rope. A ghost, a spirit, or something else entirely? Kairi’s heart leaped into her throat and she stifled a cry, but another sound came through the darkness—more familiar than the half-heard words sneaking in through the open window into her dreams. 

“Honey, what is it?”

The light came on, flooding the room with artificial sunlight, and the shadow in the threshold of the door proved only to be Sora in his black terrycloth robe and bare feet. Was he naked beneath that dark cloth, pale virtually hairless skin peeking out at the throat of his robe? From Lilet’s bed, she could see the beat of his heart in the vein beneath his porcelain-pale flesh. 

“Kairi?” he said again. 

His voice was almost drifting in on the waves of the air currents, faint, but far from a whisper. His voice seemed less real to her than that unknown cry of her daughter’s lost voice. What did it mean if she heard Lilet? Did that mean she was dead and her lost little spirit was calling out? Or was she alive and sending Kairi a sign somehow? Or, most troubling, had Kairi imagined the little voice completely? Was it just a trick of her loss-ravaged mind in the dark lonely night?

“Kairi?” Sora repeated. 

She felt him sit down on the bed beside her. She felt his warm hands on her shoulders, lightly gripping her like an anchor. She focused her eyes on his beautiful face, met his cerulean eyes. He had a bit of desperation beneath the edge of him—aching terrible black loss that was spreading fingers through him like mold. 

She put her hands over his on her shoulders and whispered, “I’m still here, Sora.”

He didn’t question what she meant by that, only carefully cupped her face. The urge to tell her about Roxas Donovan and the Peter Pan Diner and the sighting of Lilet was on the tip of his tongue like something about to drip off, but he bit down on it. What if it turned out to be nothing? What if he just gave her false hope and she came crashing down around him? No, he wouldn’t tell her. Not until he had something concrete. Wordlessly, he put his lips to her forehead and placed an endless kiss there. 

For a moment, she clutched him, digging her sharp cold fingers into his ribs through the robe. Sora didn’t push her away because he knew she didn’t mean to hurt him. Eventually, she pushed herself flush against him and let out a small sound. 

“Sora, do you…?”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“I miss her.”

“I know, but…”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Sora felt a secret beneath her skin, but he wouldn’t ask her. He would never demand answers from her. Instead, he hugged her against his chest, threading his fingers through her thick cranberry tresses and rubbing his hands up and down her shaking back. It felt good to hold her like this, to feel her warm body against his. How long had it been since he had touched her? Not since Lilet had disappeared, he realized. He hadn’t touched Kairi since Lilet disappeared. 

The loss was so thick it was like a barrier between them. Neither of them wanted to talk about the what ifs… What if they never found her? What if she was already dead? What if someone had hurt her out there alone? What if she had been hit on the head and was out wandering around with no memory of a mommy or daddy who loved her? What if…? What if, what if, what if…? 

He loved Kairi so much, more than any words or action would ever be able to express. He would carve out his heart for her, but if forced to choose between his beautiful wife and the gorgeous child that wasn’t even his… He would have chosen Lilet. That thought was like a stone in his chest, cold fingers reaching out through his bones.

What would Kairi want? Would she choose her husband or her daughter? He didn’t know it then, but she had already chosen the day before in Sunset City when the man with the bird-eyes had asked for her wedding ring in exchange for information. 

Both of them, between each other, would choose Lilet.

What a heavy thought that was.

…

The phone rang late that night, vibrating for so long as Riku struggled up through the ocean of sleep. The sound of it falling to the floor was what had really woken him, rather than the vibrating and rattling. He groped around on the rug, searching for the terrible object, glared at the caller id, and then answered when he saw what the number was. 

“Chief?” he asked groggily. 

“Riku, this is going to sound strange, but I need you to go to the hospital right now,” he said swiftly. There was no mincing of words with the chief. 

Riku was shoving his feet into socks even as he asked, “Why?”

“Just go. I normally go myself, but I can’t get away right now. You’re the only one I trust with this.”

Riku’s heart swelled, but then deflated like a popped balloon. “Trust?”

“Go to the hospital. There’s a woman there. Her name is Namine Waters, Room 141. Just stay with her until I can get there. Don’t tell anyone where you are. Don’t even tell dispatch. And don’t let anyone touch her. Not a soul,” the chief said. “And Riku, if you screw this up, it’ll cost you.” 

That threat hung in the air for a long moment, heavy between them even over the line. 

“Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” 

Then, the chief hung up and Riku sat listening to dial tone for a long moment. It wasn’t his first strange phone call in the middle of the night and it probably wouldn’t be his last. Either way, he dressed in plainclothes rather than his uniform and then drove himself to the hospital with the red and blue lights flashing but the sirens off. 

…

Holly was sitting alone in her house, knitting a scarf while she watched late night television. She hadn’t been able to sleep lately. There was some guilt weighing heavily on her shoulders. What if she hadn’t gone for a walk that day? What if she had stayed with Kairi and watched Lilet while her daughter slept in the sun? What if she had gone to the playground to play with Lilet? She wondered if it would have made a difference, if it would have saved the little girl.

She rose from her chair and turned off the quiet television. Silence descended on her house like a heavy blanket, making her heart sound like it was beating especially loud. She walked to the bathroom, started the taps, and began drawing herself a bath. She stripped off her clothes and stared at the reflection of her naked body in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. 

She fingered the scar in her abdomen. 

Her dark hair had lost its velvety luster and her skin was dry and wrinkled. She was not a beautiful young woman anymore. By now, her body had lost the beautiful curves and full pert breasts and lush pink lips that had originally attracted that horrible man to her. Holly pushed those nightmare thoughts away and swallowed the heavy tears back down her throat and into her chest where they sat like lead drops on her heart. Once again, she wished that she had been more supportive to the daughter who was just like her.

Yes, like Lilet, Kairi was a child of rape. 

Yes, like Kairi, Holly had barely survived. 

Yes, like Kairi, Holly had been saved.

She had been lying naked in a dark alley, clutching her stomach as she slowly bled to death. After raping her, the man had plunged a short pocketknife into her stomach as if that would erase the traces of him inside her. In agony, Holly remembered lying there, clutching all her secret aches and unable to rise to escape. Finally, someone found her and called 911. 

No, unlike Kairi, Holly had had no one to help her afterwards.

No, unlike Kairi, she had had no sweet Sora to stand by her.

That was why Holly begged Kairi to abort Lilet, a second child of rape. She hadn’t wanted her daughter to go through the agony that she had been through—the way her mother threw her out of the house, the looks she got being sixteen and pregnant, the sneers and the rumors, the ones who said she had liked it or deserved it. Holly had wanted to protect Kairi from all that, but now she realized her fears had been unfounded. Sora was a shield around her daughter and Lilet was a blessing to Kairi. 

Lilet was a sweet and beautiful child. 

Holly wondered if it meant something. A child of rape being raped and impregnated to have another child of rape. If Lilet was found alive and returned to her family, would she too be raped when she turned sixteen? Was this a sign that both Kairi and Lilet were not meant to have happened, should never have happened? 

Holly didn’t know. As much as Kairi had been a curse to her, Lilet had been a blessing. They were both so different and strange. 

As she soaked in the bath, Holly looked over at the collages she had hanging on the walls. Tomorrow, she decided, she would take out every single photograph of Lilet and put them a away in a shoebox under her bed. Yes, that was a good place to hide a stolen child. 

…

The hospital was a big square structure with windows like empty eye sockets. Since it was nighttime, only the emergency room was lit up like a runway. The rest of the hospital was mildly dim for the sleeping patients. The parking lot was half-full, empty of people visiting relatives now that it was only a little past midnight and visiting hours were long over so that even the pitied stragglers had been kicked out for the night. The little coffee shop across the street that made a killing on the suffering of other had only one customer—a woman with a drawn exhausted face and a too large coat around her shoulders—and Riku wondered who was in the hospital that she was waiting for. 

Riku parked his cruiser and pushed in through the emergency room doors. At the desk, he flashed his badge and continued one down the hall. Outside Room 141, he hesitated, wondering exactly what kind of person lay inside. Then, he plucked up his courage and pushed open the door. 

There was no one lying in the white bed. 

Well, no one he saw until she moved and he wondered for a moment how someone so bloodless and pale could possibly be alive. 

At first, all he saw were two big sky-blue orbs in the dimness fringed with thick feathery platinum-blonde lashes. Then, the longer he stared at what he thought was an empty bed, the more he saw of the strange woman—two petal-pink lips, a long aristocratic nose, a pad of white gauze that was the same white as her skin, a long swan-like neck, thin shoulders beneath the white paper gown, and slender childlike arms laying on top of the white covers with long thin fingers. Her face was heart-shaped and framed by long locks of platinum-blonde tresses. She was beautiful in an ethereal way that made her look like a beautiful woman from history come back from the dead, but Riku couldn’t put his finger on why for a long moment. Then, he realized, it was the eyes. Her blue eyes were deep and endless like the ocean. They were the eyes of a beautiful dead woman. 

“Um, hello,” he said because she was looking at him with those beautiful-living-dead-ocean eyes. “You’re Namine Waters, right?” 

Her lips twisted as if she felt a spike of pain. “I don’t go by that name anymore,” she said and her voice didn’t fit her face. She had a strong lovely convincing voice. 

Riku pulled up the chair beside her bed and asked, “What do you go by, then?”

She turned her face away and looked out the window at the moon beyond the glass. 

It was then, as the silvery moonlight touched her pale face, that Riku recognized her. This was the woman he had been looking for in the alley, the woman who had saved Kairi when she had been left for dead all those years ago! This was the slippery misty wisp of a woman that he had been looking for!

“You… you’re the one who saved Kairi Hart.”

“She wasn’t in danger. I didn’t save her.”

“But if you hadn’t found her—”

“Someone else would have,” she said with stunning assurance. “I just happened to be there when she was. That alley holds history for me and I like to check in on it.”

“But—”

“I’m not a good person, officer. I don’t know why you people protect me.” She buried her face in the pillow and winced at the pain in the swollen side of her face. “I need a phone. I have something important to handle.”

“Um, no one’s supposed to know you’re here. I think that includes not making phone calls,” Riku said. 

She turned her face to him and her eyes were like twin daggers going into his flesh. “Fuck you.”

Riku recoiled. This girl looked like a bisque doll left over from a previous more decadent beautiful century, but her mouth belonged to this one and was full of razor sharp teeth. He wanted to get her a phone, to let her take care of whatever this was that she needed to just so this rage would leave her pretty porcelain-pale face. After a few minutes of warring with himself while she gazed out the window, he finally handed her his cell phone and let her call. 

“Roxas? Yeah, I know it’s late, but listen to me. I brought you that seven-year-old three weeks ago and she never made it home.” There was a long pause. “What? How could that be? I know, I’ll get to it, but I’m a little hung up right now.” Another block of silence. “I’m in the hospital. Don’t worry, I’m alright. I’ll talk to you when I can. Keep an eye out.”

She passed back the phone and didn’t say thank you. Wordlessly, she turned her face back to the window and stared out at the night. Riku fidgeted in his chair beside her bed, unsure of what to do, but wanting to at least talk to her. Finally he asked, “So, what can I call you if you don’t go by Namine Waters anymore?”

She was quiet for so long that he didn’t think she was going to answer. Then, finally, she said, “White-Doll.”

X X X

There you go. Some truth within all the messed-up plotline that is my story. 

Now, show of hands, how many people still suspect Holly?

And how many people suspect someone else?

And how many people don’t know who to suspect?

Questions, comments, concerns?


	9. The Story of Namine Waters

You know what cartoon I miss? Liberty’s Kids. I used to love that show and they had the best opening theme song! I actually found a video with the song for Kingdom Hearts and it’s pretty good. Interested? Link: http:// www. you tube. com /watch?v=IADXU-zXXdo. It made history look so epic and cool and now it’s gone. How sad…

X X X

Roxas Donovan put the phone back in its cradle beside his bed, wrestled out from beneath the heavy covers since he had air-conditioning, and stood looking out the window at the bleak black night beyond. He didn’t sleep well at the best of times. Memories and thoughts of his dead daughter kept him up—her whispery little voice on the wind, her bright smile in his eyes, her laughter, her clothes and her favorite teddy bear, the frogs she caught and brought into the house, her yappy little dog that was long-dead now, everything he had adored and cherished about her was a heartbreakingly clear memory in his head. This was proving to be another endless night of no sleep. 

White-Doll had been hurt. 

Lilet had never made it home to her parents.

That was more than an awful convergence of circumstances. There was something sinister going on just beneath the surface of the world here. Roxas sat on his bed in the dark and tried to remember what the woman he had seen Lilet go off with looked like. Goddamn it, he couldn’t call up an image of her face! Nothing, not even the color of her hair or eyes. It was as if the moment had been whipped from his memory, yet he remembered Lilet clearly as she walked away with that woman. He even remembered her looking back and smiling at him as the door swung shut, but the woman’s face escaped him. 

The more he thought about it, he realized she had been so incredibly ordinary that she hadn’t stuck out in his mind at all. She was a middle-aged woman with straight plain-colored hair and a kind usual face. There had been nothing out-of-the-ordinary about her. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought it was Lilet’s own mother, but he remembered Kairi Hart’s face from the news of her rape seven years ago. He would have remembered Kairi’s red hair and smoky twilight-colored eyes if he had seen her against the green of the Peter Pan Diner. No, it hadn’t been Kairi.

His phone rang again and he picked it up eagerly. 

“White-Doll?”

“No, it’s me, the girl you helped. I wanted to let you know my grandmother and I made it home safely. And I wanted to thank you.”

Roxas smiled even though he was disappointed. “I’m glad you’re safe and, please, remembered my kindness to pass on.”

He could feel her smiling. “I will. I won’t ever forget you. I couldn’t,” she said. “Do I owe you anything?”

“No, nothing at all.”

“Thanks again, Roxas. I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been for you and White-Doll. I wonder if I would’ve died.”

Her words went deep into Roxas’s heart and settled there like ice. He forced himself to speak. “I’m sure you would have pulled through. You’re a strong girl.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Thanks.”

They talked for a moment more and then the girl hung up and Roxas was alone with his thoughts. He had always loved what he, White-Doll, and his other people did. They got people off the streets from boys peddling their beautiful flesh to older men who tore them apart to battered women who could hardly see form their swollen eyes. But, now, he felt as if he had failed in the surest sense of the word. A seven-year-old child, Lilet Strife, had been in his care—safe and on her way home—but whoever had stolen her had slipped right under Roxas. He had failed an innocent child and there was no way of telling if he would ever be able to right that grievous screw-up. 

Roxas shook himself, decided there was no way he would be able to sleep tonight and gave up. He showered, dressed, and got into his car. Aimlessly, he drove the miles from Sunrise Town to Sunset City, watching the change in the sky as he left the small dim town behind him and approached the petals of neon banishing the stars from the black sky over Sunset City. Such a great difference, he thought as he looked at the color-stained face of the moon that had looked so white outside the Peter Pan Diner. 

He wondered again how exactly he had met White-Doll. She had been Namine Waters back then, someone out of control of her life and running from everything like a deer being hunted. Now, she was a prostitute, empowered by her body and the looks she had thought brought nothing but pain to her. You see, there was something in her frail doll-white face that made everyone trust her. If the FBI ever needed top secret information, all they would have to do was send in White-Doll and people would simply spill their guts for her. Roxas was convinced it was her innocent child-like expression, but White-Doll insisted it was only her full breasts and sexy mouth. 

They quarreled over that sometimes, but it was good-natured.

Roxas would never have been able to live without White-Doll. She also sent most of the battered and tormented people in his direction, sending them into safe arms easily and quickly. His others took far longer and sometimes by the time they got the damaged souls to him, they were already broken beyond repair. White-Doll was the best at getting people out of dangerous situations. Hell, she had had plenty of practice getting herself out of bad situations that she was a veritable professional. 

Men who hurt beautiful girls like Namine Waters and Kairi Hart should be shot outright!

Roxas parked and sat drumming his long fingers on the steering wheel in front of White-Doll’s corner. Her two friends, Jackie and Amber, were working the corner tonight and Roxas watched them plying their flesh trade for a while before becoming disgusted and driving away. In his rearview mirror, he saw another car slide into the space he had vacated and Jackie climbed eagerly into the backseat. He hated even to think of White-Doll doing the same thing.

Roxas didn’t realized when he wound up in Moon Valley in front of the Strife’s house and he didn’t know it was their house either. For a moment, he idled in their neighborhood, feeling the sadness heavy in the air. Then, he looked up at the dark windows and felt as if someone was looking down at him, watching him, but the window appeared empty. Unnerved, Roxas drove on and finally returned to the Peter Pan Diner just as dawn was breaking and his first early-bird customers were pulling into the lot. He chatted amicably with them as he unlocked the doors. Inside, two waitresses had already arrived and were prepping for the morning by putting on coffee and opening drums of orange juice. 

Then, Roxas Donovan lost himself to the wonderful mindless work of everyday life. The battered damaged souls that made up his nights were far more difficult than the demanding customers of the day though sometimes he didn’t know which ones he preferred. 

…

It was early. The sun had just begun to peek above the horizon line, spilling and array of colors into the sky that didn’t last more than five minutes before giving way to the regular tapestry of sunny blue. It was definitely still before seven though Riku was trying hard not to look at his watch for what seemed like the millionth time. Outside the window, the wind was howling like a banshee and the trees looked as if they were going to be uprooted and blow away like dry twigs at any moment, but the sky showed no signs of any bad weather. It was perfect crystal-clear cerulean blue. 

Riku Wise was still sitting at Namine Waters’ aka White-Doll’s bedside and by now he had decided she was not only a very difficult woman but a veritable ice-bitch. She hadn’t said a word to him since he had allowed her to use his phone the night before. She just sat there in the hospital bed, blending in with the white sheets like a chameleon with those icy blue eyes of hers open and her pale face completely closed. 

Finally, Chief Axel Ryder slammed into the room. His red hair was a wild wind-blown halo around his handsome slim face. The two tear-shaped tattoos beneath his green eyes, testimony to his earlier mafia connections, made his face appear haunted in the low light of the still-sleepy hospital. He was a chain-smoker, but for once his mouth was empty of its customary cigarette, probably because the hospital staff had threatened to beat him with a stick because nothing less than physical violence could ever get him to stop smoking. 

When he charged in, the ice-bitch sat bolt upright and snapped, “It’s about time. Who’s this oaf you sent to guard me?”

“I know he’s an oaf. I have it memorized, but he’s the only one I could trust with you!” Axel blurted out. For once, he seemed out of control where most of the time it seemed as if the sun itself bowed to his will. But White-Doll would not be bowing to Axel Ryder’s will. No, she commanded men and the chief was no exception.

At being called an oaf, Riku crossed his arms over his chest and glared, but no one was paying any attention to him. Axel and White-Doll were caught in their own two-color world and Riku wasn’t a part of their spectrum. 

“What happened to you?” It sounded as if he wanted to tack on some useless pet name, but restrained himself. 

“Bird-Man caught me in the face with I bat, I think,” she said.

“Bird-Man-Bill? I’ll pop a cap up his ass!”

White-Doll put a hand on Axel’s shoulder and he withered like a plant caught in a frost. “Don’t worry. I’ll get him, but I need to talk to you about something else,” she said. “Sit down.” 

Axel did, practically on Riku before he realized the other officer was there. Then, he sat down on the bed beside White-Doll. “What is it?”

“Lilet Strife.”

“Yes, she’s been missing a little more than a month now. What about her?”

“The week she went missing I found her on the streets of Sunset City—”

“That seedy place?!”

“Shut up. Yes, I picked her up and held on to her for a few days and then sent her to Roxas Donovan.”

“The Peter Pan Man?”

She nodded. “Yes and he said he’d take care of her.”

“Is it possible—?”

“No!” She snapped at him like a dragon, smoke practically coming out of her ears and some red coming into her white cheeks. “Roxas would never do anything and you know that. I talked to him already and he says a woman came and took Lilet.”

“A woman? Did he describe her to you?”

White-Doll shook her head. “He couldn’t. He couldn’t remember what she looked like.”

Axel fished in his pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and made the motions of lighting up. White-Doll put her hand on his as he flicked the lighter and he grouchily slid the cigarette back into the pack and restlessly flicked the lighter. “I don’t understand. I know Roxas Donovan and he gets a lot of runaways back into safe arms. It doesn’t make sense that Lilet would have been stolen out from under him of all people,” he said sourly. “Roxas practically rescues people for a living.”

“I know. There’s something rotten going on here. This is rotten from the inside.”

Axel stood up from the bed. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I just have a headache. I need to get back on the streets and try to work this mess out. I need to get Bird-Man-Bill.”

“I understand. I’ll drive you.”

Wordlessly, White-Doll got out of bed and began dressing in her jeans and a shirt with a lot of dried blood on the shoulder. Only as she stripped in front of both men without a care in the world for her naked body and Riku saw the scars on her back did he snap out of his silent reverie.

“Wait a minute! Chief, you can’t just let her go! She’s involved with Lilet Strife’s disappearance!” Riku protested as White-Doll fastened her bra with her long thin fingers behind her back. 

Axel grabbed Riku by the scruff of his neck as if he were a bad child and snapped, “I will explain this to you after we drop of White-Doll.”

“Ow, ow, okay, okay!” 

Then, Axel half-dragged Riku from Room 141 and they stood together in the hall while White-Doll dressed inside. After only a few minutes, she came out of the room. She had peeled the gauze off her face, revealing an ugly twisted wound on her cheekbone. It was ugly color in her porcelain-white face. Other than that, she somehow looked beautiful even though she hadn’t showered and her hair was knotted at the ends with blood and there were dark bruise-like circles beneath her eyes. 

“Riku,” Axel said. “Go to the coffee shop across the street and get us a table. I’ll be back as soon as I can and I’ll explain everything. Okay?”

Riku hesitated. 

“Okay?” Axel repeated. His green eyes were boring into Riku. 

White-Doll was watching him closely. 

“Y-yes!”

“Good.” 

Then, Axel took White-Doll by her bare skinny elbow and guided her quickly down the hall as if afraid someone would apprehend her from him until they vanished safely into the elevator. Riku’s heart raced and he only felt calm once White-Doll’s piercing blue eyes and pale face were out of sight behind the sliding metal doors. Then, he took a deep breath and sagged against the wall beside Room 141. Axel was going to Sunset City so Riku had some time. He found a payphone and punched in the Strife’s phone number.

…

Sora was woken from his first sleep in what felt like eternity. He almost wanted to roll over and ignore the phone, but his wakefulness immediately brought thoughts of his empty bed to his mind and he knew he wouldn’t be falling back to sleep anyway. He sat up and grumbled a bleary, “Hello?”

“Good morning, Sora,” Holly said sweetly. 

“Holly?” he mumbled.

“Oh, did I wake you? I’m so sorry. I was hoping to speak with Kairi,” Holly continued. She was disgustingly chipper and made Sora want to smother himself in the pillows. 

“Hold on,” he muttered. “I’ll take a look.” Sora hauled himself out of bed, shrugged into his robe, and shuffled his way to Lilet’s room. Kairi was lying in Lilet’s empty bed, red hair streaming across the pillows like silk. She looked so incredibly peaceful, like an angel, like a child that Sora couldn’t bear to wake her. Instead, he lied to her mother. “No, she must have gone out. Can I take a message?”

“Oh, no. I’m sorry I woke you for nothing. Please, just tell her that I called,” Holly said. She sounded so incredibly disappointed that Sora felt bad for her, but not bad enough to wake Kairi form her sleep. After all, her mother had tormented and practically disowned her when she was pregnant with Lilet. It wasn’t like Kairi owed her mother anything.

“I will,” Sora promised. Then, he hung up with a snap.

He stood at Lilet’s bedside for a long moment, looking down at his sleeping wife. Then, he carefully lifted the covers and slid into the bed beside her. The smell of their child rushed into his pores, filing him with sadness. Tears burned in his eyes and he tried to force them back but to no avail. The trembling of his body woke Kairi and she rolled over to look at him curiously. When she saw his tears, she cupped his face gently and brushed the jewels from his soft cheeks. 

Then, for the first time in months, she kissed him. It was so hesitant and soft, like the touch of a butterfly’s wings and Sora clutched at her, desperate for more. She tried to pull away, but he held her tightly to his chest desperately.

“Please, Kairi,” he whispered. “Don’t you miss being with me?”

She sobbed. “Yes, but…”

“Please, I need to touch you,” he whispered. “Please!”

She kissed him again and, desperately, they made love. Afterwards, Kairi went quickly to shower and Sora lay alone in a bed again. The scent of Lilet surrounded him, pressing down on him until he felt as if he were lying inside her coffin. More tears welled up in his eyes. Then, the faintest of sounds like a breeze touching a tinkling bell…

_‘Daddy, I’m not gone.’_

Unlike Kairi, he told himself quickly that he hadn’t heard anything and went to join Kairi in the shower. She didn’t let him touch her even to simply wash her back and once he was there, she quickly got out. Sora showered alone. He was so alone anymore and he hated it. He decided that today he would call off sick from work and go to the Peter Pan Diner to see Roxas Donovan. He would do anything just to escape this terrible loneliness that nothing could fill.

…

Officer Riku Wise was sitting at a table with two cups of medium black coffee, waiting for Chief Axel Ryder. He had gotten the busy signal when he called the Strife’s house and after that, the answering machine. He hadn’t left a message, unsure what exactly to say. Finally, Axel arrived. He was smoking again and one of the employees quickly got after him and forced him to either extinguish it or finish it outside. Riku watched Axel smoke through the window, desperate to know about White-Doll and why she had just been let go after being assaulted. Finally, Axel came in and slid into the seat across from Riku. 

“Black?” he asked.

Riku nodded and watched him take a long drink. 

“Okay, Riku, what do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

“Pretty ballsy,” Axel said, “but I have that memorized and I wouldn’t have expected anything less. Okay, I’ll tell you everything, but I have to start at the beginning. It’s a long story and I don’t like to be interrupted. So, do you have to pee?”

Riku shook his head. Even if he had, he still wouldn’t have gone to the bathroom.

Axel smiled and took another drink. Then, he began. “White-Doll used to be a cop, Namine Waters. She was a great cop, too, but it turns out she couldn’t protect the crimes close to home. She had an abusive husband and the guy beat the shit out of her day in and day out. Then, one day, he went too far and cut up her back until she looked like a slave in one of those old movies. She wouldn’t take it after that and she killed him, flat out shot him in the face. But because of all her wounds, the jury released her. 

“They justified the killing of her dick husband and Namine got drunk off of it. She loved killing those people that deserved it and she decided that she couldn’t do it as a cop. She turned in her badge and became a prostitute because they deal with every lowlife on the planet and she started picking people off one by one—abusive johns, dealers, wife beaters, child abusers, anybody who was scum. All the cops on the force know she’s the one doing it, but she’s mastered the art of the perfect crime and even if we wanted to, we couldn’t pin anything on her. So Namine Waters became White-Doll and cut all ties with her old life to be just a vigilante.

“So now, anytime somebody figured out that she’s the one who killed off their dearly beloved, the force protects her because she does the world a great and terrible service.” Axel took a drink. “But that’s just the beginning. Killing them wasn’t enough for her and she decided that she wanted to save the victims.

“I digress now because she had to meet Roxas Donovan for the rest of this to make sense. Roxas has been saving and helping the victims since his daughter died and he built the Peter Pan Diner. He has numerous people on the street—prostitutes, nuns, priests, teachers, regular people—and these people find runaways and stolen children and battered women and send them to him. He, in turn, gets them home or into a shelter or even into more capable hands if he himself can’t handle their situation. Namine is an avenging angel, but Roxas is an actual God-send.

“Namine met Roxas one night when she had two twins under her arms and needed to get them something to eat. So here she is, a beautiful thin doll-faced blonde with two kids that look as if they have been to the ends of the earth and back. Roxas knows how to spot them and knew exactly what those kids were, but he thought Namine was their abusive mother or something so he called the cops—called me to be more specific. I explained to him what Namine was and the two of them now have the tightest camaraderie I have ever seen.” 

Axel took a long drink of coffee. “Namine, I mean White-Doll, tells me that she had the Strife girl in her hands and got her to Roxas, but between the two of them, that girl should have made it home in one piece. Something isn’t adding up.”

Riku took a sip of his own coffee, wincing at the coldness of it. “So, what happened?”

Axel rolled his shoulders, took out a cigarette, and put it in his mouth without lighting it. “I don’t know,” he said and looked out the window. “I really don’t know.”

X X X

Phew, long chapter. Sora and Kairi are kind of being forgotten which is weird since Lilet is their kid. It’s because if I kept going with them, everybody else would be really hard to work with in the future. Needed that back story so now that that’s out of the way… Come back to me, plot! *gets out fishing pole and tries to reel it in*

And there’s the back story of Roxas and Namine aka White-Doll. SO, now you have less people to suspect because those two are career goody-two-shoes. So, who do we all suspect now? Holly? Bird-Man-Bill? An accident?

So, does everyone like Police Chief Axel? Got it memorized?

Questions, comments, concerns?


	10. The First Victim: Holly Hart

I think this story might be pretty short. With the way it’s coming along, if I drag this out it just won’t work.

X X X

There was a knock on the door shortly after Sora left for work. Kairi tightened the belt of her thick terrycloth robe and went to answer it. Standing on the stoop was a tall red-haired man with gang-kill teardrops beneath each sharp green eye. She closed the door over, peering at him around the threshold suspiciously, and asked him curtly what it was he wanted. He smiled good-naturedly as if he got this response all the time. Then, he produced a police badge from the pocket of his coat and smiled even wider. 

“Hi, I’m Chief Axel Ryder. Could I have a minute of your time?”

Kairi let out a breath and allowed him into her house. “What is it?”

“I just need to ask you a few questions.”

“Coffee?” Kairi asked because that was the drill when there were cops in her house. 

“No,” Axel said with a small strained smile. “Please, this will just take a minute.”

Kairi sat down on the couch, gesturing for him to sit beside her. 

From the pocket of his grey smoky-smelling overcoat he produced a small stack of photographs and handed them to Kairi. “Do you recognize any of these people?” he asked. 

Kairi leafed through the photographs, but no expression of recognition crossed her face. “No, I’m sorry,” she said finally. 

Axel shuffled the photos, placing the one of White-Doll on top. Then, he extracted a photo of Bird-Man-Bill. “How about this man?”

Surprisingly, she said, “Yes. I gave this man my ring and he told me he had seen my daughter with a prostitute named White-Doll.” 

“White-Doll?” Axel repeated and hoped his shock didn’t show on his face. 

Kairi nodded. “I went looking for her, but I couldn’t find her anywhere.” She passed back the photograph. “What does he have to do with my daughter’s disappearance?”

Axel rolled his shoulders. “I’m not entire sure yet. Thanks for your time, Mrs. Strife.” He felt her eyes on his back as he returned to his unmarked car. 

What the hell was going on? 

How had Kairi gotten so close to White-Doll and Bird-Man-Bill without his knowing? 

Wordlessly, but beginning to feel like a bug in a hot frying pan, Axel drove away and watched the Strife’s house diminish in the rearview mirror. Kairi was standing at the window, watching him. Halfway down the street, he put in a call to Holly Hart. 

…

Sora Strife arrived at the Peter Pan Diner just as a nice elderly couple was leaving. Inside, the diner was mostly empty with the breakfast rush having just passed. The green-clad waiters and waitresses were clearing and cleaning the last of the tables. 

There was only one customer remaining at the counter sipping something hot and steaming, tea or coffee maybe, from a white ceramic mug that was practically camouflaged by her long-fingered moon-white graceful hands. If Sora had to describe her in a few words, he would have said white moth, but there was nothing plain about her. She was undeniably eye-catching. Even in his distracted lonely state, he spent several long seconds just staring at her. 

While Sora was absently staring at the moon-white woman, Roxas Donovan recognized his distraught sleepless face. “Sora, right?” He swept an arm around Sora’s narrow child-like shoulders and guided him to a booth. “Have a seat. Have you had any breakfast?”

Sora shook his head. “I’m not hungry. I just… I had to get out of my house. I… I need somebody to talk to.”

Roxas bit his lip. Sora looked like one of the runaways Namine “White-Doll” Waters brought him, half-starved and broken-down. So, Roxas followed his usually procedure. “Come on, let’s get you something to eat. Do you like pancakes?”

Sora shook his head. “I’m not hungry.”

“Come on, we have the best French Toast in three counties. No joke, we won the National-French-Toast-Off last year.” It was clear Roxas was making things up, pulling stories out of thin air, and Sora’s tired wounded-looking mouth quirked in a small smile. 

“Okay,” Sora said finally. 

Roxas hustled off to the kitchen, catching the pale customer at the counter by her elbow and leading her through the swinging door with him. 

Alone, Sora sat at the green table, staring down at the map of Neverland beneath the glass on the table. A waitress brought him a cup of coffee and a plate of French toast faster than he thought humanly possible. Silently, he dug into the powdered-sugary and syrupy goodness and found that Roxas was right. This French Toast was to die for! He wished Lilet was here with him to try some. She loved French Toast. And, just like that, Sora was devastated and crying again.

…

In the kitchen, Roxas asked the cook to give them a little privacy. Then, he gently pushed Namine against the wall and plucked the mug of tea from her cold white hands, setting it down on the top of the towering fridge beside them. For a moment, he just stared into her blank porcelain-doll face, into her deep ocean-blue eyes, and she looked wordlessly back at him, meeting his gaze unwaveringly. The fridge blew warm air on them. 

Then, coolly, she said, “What is it?”

“Lilet Strife’s father is here.”

She lowered her eyes.

“Do you want to leave out the back?”

Surprisingly, she shook her head. “No. Let me talk to him.”

Roxas’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. 

Namine was not one to accept anyone’s gratitude or blame. She wouldn’t have accepted anyone’s money or hugs when they found out she was the one who got their child back to them. She also wouldn’t have allowed anyone to yell in her face when they found out their child had been whoring and into hard drugs while they lived on the streets. She brought these runaways in and back to safety simply because she wanted to. So, to keep herself out of the line of hatred and love, she simply avoided the people she dealt with. She passed the children on to Roxas and allowed him to toe the dangerous line. For her to want to meet Lilet’s father was… strange.

“Really?” he asked. 

She flicked those blue eyes at him, pushed him back with both hands on his chest, and said flatly, “Yes. Now, your heart is pounding. Have a glass of water and get out of my way.” She left her mug on top of the fridge because there was no way in hell she could ever reach it and left Roxas staring at her back. 

The green door swung shut.

…

Sora had already finished the wonderful plate of French Toast. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until he had started eating. Within minutes, he was staring down at an empty syrupy and sugary plate. He realized now that he hadn’t had a real meal in days. He hadn’t had a home-cooked meal since Lilet’s disappearance. He was contemplating licking the empty plate when the moon-white woman who had been sitting at the counter slid into the bench across from him. He looked into her pale face, at her deep endless blue eyes, and couldn’t find his voice. 

“My name is White-Doll,” Namine said flatly, getting right to the point. “I’m the one who brought your daughter to Roxas. Tell me everything you know about what happened. I want to find her.” Then, she sat back in the booth and stared hard into Sora’s shocked face. When several minutes passed with him not saying anything, mouth hanging open, she snapped, “Well?”

“You… you’re the one who stole her?!” He leaped up, slamming his hands down hard on the surface of the table. 

Roxas bolted into the room and slipped quickly into the space beside Namine. “You are a crazy person,” he hissed to Namine and then turned quickly to Sora. “Um, I need to explain a few things to you.” He waited while Sora sank slowly back into his seat and then began, “White-Doll found your daughter wandering the streets of Sunset City. Whoever had stolen her had simply dumped her in the dangerous city where someone would have caught and killed her.”

Sora sucked in a sharp breath, blue eyes welling up with tears.

Namine pressed back against the seat, pale face going a touch paler. She didn’t handle tears well. Hell, she didn’t handle most human emotions well. She was impossibly like a doll, emotionless and cold but still gentle and trustworthy. 

“White-Doll found her on the streets and brought her to me.”

“Why would she bring my Lilet to you?”

Roxas scratched the back of his neck. “Well, I actually run a kind of safe house here. I have several, um, contacts,” he glanced at Namine who was a prostitute, “that bring me runaways and battered women and all sorts of people in need of help. From here, I get them either home or to the proper place where they can get help. White-Doll doesn’t like to directly deal with people so that’s why she brought Lilet to me.”

Sora let out a breath. “Then… what happened?”

Roxas lowered his eyes. “I’m not sure. I called your house and told you that I had her and a woman came to pick her up, but then you arrived here in search of her, telling me that she never made it home.”

Sora bit his lip. “Wait, you called my house?”

Roxas nodded. 

“Who came to get Lilet?” He dug his wallet from his pocket and pulled out a family photograph of himself, Kairi, Lilet, and Holly. “One of us?”

Namine leaned forward as well, peering down at the photo as Roxas plucked it gently from Sora’s outstretched fingers. 

Roxas stared at the glossy 3X4 for what felt like a full minute. Then, he said softly, “This woman was the one who came to get her.” 

“No,” Sora breathed as the photo slid across the table to rest in the Pirate’s Cove of Neverland.

Roxas was pointing to Holly.

X X X

Wow, for me that was a long time between updates. Like four whole days! Did anyone notice?

Questions, comments, concerns?


	11. Strife, Hart, & Wise: Pt III

The long-awaited return of… *dun dun dun*

ParadiseAvenger’s Recommendation Board:

A Past Nightmare's Shadow by Everhopeful83. (Over on Fanfiction.net.)

He’s having some difficulty getting reviews (or critiques or flames or anything really) so I’d like everyone to be nice and leave him a review! Please, for me? Come on, I know you’re all nice people! Don’t let me down, everybody!

X X X

Inside the perfect childish façade of the Peter Pan Diner where no one in passing would ever suspect such things—saving and failure, happiness and profound sadness—to be going on beneath the surface, Sora leaped up from the green booth again, slamming his knees into the table. He cursed for a moment, rubbing his banged knees as tears sprang to the corners of his blue eyes, and then whirled on Roxas. “Why’d you only call my house?! Why didn’t you call the police?!” he demanded, placing blame and lashing out like most people did when something terrible happened. 

Roxas’s face remained calm and smooth. He dealt with emotional people on a regular basis and parents were no exception. “I did call the police. I always call the police,” he said. “I have something set up between the police and this diner, a trust system almost. I manage a lot of things that they can’t for simple lack of man power,” he explained. “I get the runaways and the battered women and get them into safe hands without my name ever being brought up. What I do is almost a secret.”

“You… you talked to the police then…” Sora sank down again, rubbing his face with his hands. “How could this happen?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense,” Roxas said. “I talked directly to Chief Axel Ryder.”

Namine’s pale brow wrinkled. “Axel Ryder?”

“You know him, White-Doll?” Roxas asked, half-turned to face her. He hated seeing the sadness, the brokenness, in Sora’s cerulean-blue eyes.

She bit her lip. “In a way… I’ve seen him on the streets of Sunset City. He used to be a gang member. I knew him then.” She looked into her white hands as if seeing something there and then whispered, “He used to be real close with Bird-Man-Bill. I don’t know what prompted him to become a policeman. Maybe he got sick of all the murder and rape on Sunset City’s streets.” She rolled her narrow shoulders in a shrug. 

“Axel Ryder?” Sora repeated as if in a daze.

Namine cut her eyes at him warily, unsure of what he was going to do next, and then pushed against Roxas with her cold beautiful body. “Get up. I need to leave,” she said. 

Roxas obligingly got up, but caught her hand. “Please, be careful,” he glanced at Sora and lowered his voice. “Please, be careful, Namine.”

Her eyes flashed when she heard that name, but she did not snap at him the way she had snapped at Riku Wise. Roxas was the only one she allowed to call her by that name anymore. Maybe because he was the only one left alive who had ever known her by it. Her family was all dead now, she had killed her abusive dickhead husband herself, and she had never had any children. Either way, she permitted him to speak that old name aloud, only him. 

Silently, she nodded, platinum tresses whispering against her pale cheeks like ghostly fingertips stroking her skin. Then, she whispered so softly that he barely heard her, “Remember that name, please.” 

It was as good as saying she was going to die, that she wasn’t coming back alive. 

Roxas almost grabbed her hand and held her back, but he had learned by now that there was no stopping White-Doll or Namine Waters once she set her mind to something. Instead, he nodded and watched her back as she walked out the door. The sun streamed in when she opened it, bouncing off her moon-white body and clothing so that she blended in with the brightness. Then, like a shadow passing in front of the sun, the doorway was empty and she was gone. 

Roxas returned to the booth and sat down across from Sora. “So,” he said softly. “What will you do now?”

Sora shook his head. “What can I do?” 

Roxas touched his hand and Sora looked up into his face. “You know who took her,” he whispered.

Sora looked down at the family photograph, at Holly’s strange face full of so many weird emotions—love and fear, hatred and happiness. He bit his lip and said, “I guess there’s only one thing to do.” Then, he put the photo back into his wallet, thanked Roxas for the French Toast, and left the diner. 

Alone, Roxas stared down at the map of Neverland, at the Pirate’s Cove and the Mermaid’s Lagoon and the Indian Camp. Then, he wordlessly got up and began clearing the table of all traces that Sora Strife and Namine “White-Doll” Waters had ever been there. 

On top of the fridge in the kitchen, Namine’s mug of tea was still sitting, untouched save a fat black fly. The cook swatted it down viciously with a towel and the ceramic shattered into a million pieces on the hard tile floor. The cook hastily mopped up the tea and swept up the shards, dumping both into the trash can. Untouched, the fly continued to buzz around the kitchen. 

…

Officer Riku Wise was off-duty and driving aimlessly. He didn’t know where he should be going, but he felt as if something terrible was going to happen soon. He wanted to stop it before it happened. Too many bad things had happened since little Lilet Strife’s disappearance. The murder rate had spiked, the rapists were on a rampage, a prostitute had just died because of a badly-done abortion, and poor Selphie Tilmitt was in the hospital because her boyfriend had broken her jaw. 

He drove past the Strife’s house, but it looked empty. So he drove by Moon Lake and sat a moment just watching all the happy families. Then, he slowly drove out of Moon Valley, wandering the endless roads that led from one ocean to another. 

He didn’t know what made him stop in Sunrise Town for a cup of coffee. He didn’t know what made him stop at the Peter Pan Diner of all places. He didn’t know what in the owner’s face made him think of the white-pale woman in the hospital—Namine “White-Doll” Waters. 

But he did all these things. 

And they would be what drew him irresistibly into the deadly cycle that began when seven-year-old Lilet Strife was stolen on that beautiful sunny day from the playground of Moon Lake.

…

Sora came home to an empty house. 

Kairi’s minivan was not in the garage and there was no note left for him on the corkboard. She was just gone, just like Lilet… He took a deep breath to calm himself, grinding his teeth and biting the inside of his mouth to keep from crying out. There was a reason she was gone, he told himself, nothing to get jumpy about. There’s no need to panic, he told himself sternly. 

But he did anyway. 

Quickly, he got his gun from the drawer in the nightstand beside his bed and raced off to Holly Hart’s house at top speed. If she had been able to steal him daughter from him, there was no reason why she couldn’t take his wife from him. After all, Holly had practically disowned Kairi when she had been a struggling pained teenager with a child of rape growing in her womb. There was no saying exactly what a heartless woman like that was capable of. 

…

Kairi Strife had once again returned to the seedy streets of Sunset City during the quiet daylight hours. She wandered the deserted streets aimlessly, looking up at the dark towering buildings that were lit up so brightly at night. She wondered if Lilet could be hidden behind one of those ugly graffiti-covered walls and her heart lurched painfully. Tears burned in her eyes and she rushed back to her car, wedged herself into the backseat, lay down, and cried. 

…

Namine’s feet pounded a beat on the cracked concrete sidewalk. She was half-dressed in her come-hither angelic whore clothes—a white tank top with a lace-trimmed bra beneath, short white pleated school girl skirt, white lace thigh highs and garters, and her spike heeled come-fuck-me pumps. As she walked, she painted her plump lips rose-red and pinched some color into her white cheeks. Now, she was ready to face the world and all its sleaze-bags. 

Night was falling and the first flickers of neon began to come on all along the street like blossoming flowers. She watched Jackie and Amber saunter out of the building to her left. They called out to her as she passed, but she didn’t even spare them a passing glance. She had other things on her mind right now. 

Like Axel Ryder.

And Lilet Strife.

And Holly Hart. 

But mainly Axel Ryder, the gang-sludge-turned-cop. 

Something was rotten underneath this situation and she was going to find out what it was if it killed her. 

…

Roxas prided himself in being able to spot anyone in any given situation, in knowing exactly what kind of person they were. So, when Riku Wise walked in the door of the Peter Pan Diner, it took Roxas all of ten seconds to decide that he was a cop. 

Riku sat down at the counter and ordered a cup of coffee, black. 

The other thing Roxas prided himself with was knowing exactly which way people liked their coffee and he did not take Riku as a ‘black coffee’ man. He took Riku as a ‘two sugars and cream’ man so even though he ordered it black, Roxas still put down the jar of sugar and the pitcher of cream for him. As he had suspected, Riku poured both into the black coffee until it was almost white. 

“So,” Roxas began. “Why do you order black coffee if you don’t like it that way?”

Riku rolled his shoulders. “My boss likes his black. Hell, the whole force likes it black. I don’t want to look like a… you know,” he said softly and took a long gulp of the coffee. 

“Ah, fitting in,” Roxas said and wiped down the counter. “I don’t see what’s so wonderful about it.”

Riku smiled. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“What do you mean?”

Riku looked around at the faeries on the lamps, at the maps of Neverland of the tables, and the green-clad smiling happy-to-be-working waitresses. “This place is so… fearless.”

Roxas smiled. “Well, that’s what Peter Pan is, right? Fearless? He can fly and he always has a happy thought,” he said. Riku didn’t need the story of Roxas’s dead daughter so he kept it to himself. “So, what brings you to Sunrise Town?”

Like most people who came into the Peter Pan Diner, Riku shrugged. “I don’t know. I just kind of… wound up here. I was out for a drive and I just… decided to stop for a cup of coffee.”

“Ah,” Roxas said. “I get a lot of people just coming through.”

Riku stared into his coffee absently. 

“So, why are you really coming through?”

“I’m a cop,” Riku said softly. “And I just have a bad feeling. I had to get out of Moon Valley.”

“A bad feeling?”

He nodded. “Yeah. It feels as if the whole world’s been falling apart since Lilet Strife vanished.”

Roxas choked on his tongue. “Lilet Strife?” How did these things happen? How did not only Sora Strife, but a policeman on Lilet’s case just happen to find the diner? Life worked in incredibly strange and mysterious ways. 

Riku nodded. “Yeah. Sweet little seven-year-old who was stolen right out from underneath her mother at the park. Then, apparently some prostitute found her and brought her to the Peter Pan Man, but she never made it home.” His eyes widened and he looked around again. “Y-You! You’re the Peter Pan Man! Tell me, what happened?! How did she not make it home?!”

Roxas chewed his lip and wiped the counter down again. “Well, I don’t know. I called the police and talked directly to Chief Axel Ryder, but somehow… I don’t know!” Desperately, he rubbed his forehead. “Something isn’t right!”

Riku was staring at him with those cop eyes. Roxas could tell Riku knew he wasn’t telling the entire truth. 

“Her grandmother came to pick her up and she never made it home.”

“What?!” Riku shrieked and leaped to his feet just like Sora had. “Holly Hart took Lilet?!”

“Yes, I didn’t know. I called the Strife’s house and Holly answered. She came to pick up Lilet and I just didn’t think anything of it. Then Sora Strife shows up here and tells me his daughter never made it home,” Roxas explained. 

“Wait,” Riku said sharply. “You called the police and talked to Axel?”

Roxas nodded. 

Riku’s green eyes bugged out of his head and he said softly, “Oh shit.”

After a moment, Roxas followed Riku’s train of thought. He didn’t swear, but his heart stopped beating in his chest. There was only one variable no one had suspected, well maybe two—the treachery of mothers and the corruption of the police.

X X X

Well, well, two words: curve ball! Who saw that coming? 

I really do think this will be over fairly soon. Twenty chapters TOPS!

Questions, comments, concerns?


	12. The Warehouse

ParadiseAvenger's Recommendation Board:

A Past Nightmare's Shadow by Everhopeful83. (Over on Fanfiction.net.)

Thanks Anime Lover Bebe for always being wonderful and listening to me! Kudos to you! I love you!

X X X

Dark cool night was falling, like a door being closed tightly on the day. The sun was sinking below the horizon, painting the sky a bouquet of rainbow colors, and city lights were coming on to blot out the coming moonlight. The first stars came out, shimmering and rippling. Once the last rays of sunlight faded, the sky was the color of deep still water. Only the waning moon broke the dimness, but it wasn’t nearly enough to push back the coming night. 

Nothing would be enough to contain the darkness of this night. 

When Sora Strife arrived at Holly Hart’s house, there was an unmarked police cruiser parked at the end of the driveway. Spike of worry jumped up in his chest, fluttering like a caged little bird desperate to escape. The gun was cold and heavy in his hand and he clicked open the chamber, checking once again to be sure it was loaded. It was. Then, he sucked the cool evening air into his lungs and marched up to the front door. He pounded his fist on the door so hard that the skin across his knuckles split. Some blood splattered on the cracked white concrete. 

Holly pulled open the door, breathless with some unknown emotion. She had her hair beautifully braided and curled around her thin face and was wearing jeans and a silky black blouse. She almost didn’t look like Kairi’s aged sour mother or even like the kidnapper Sora now knew her to be. She looked young and sweet and innocent, but that was just a façade now. 

“Holly,” he said and his voice was shockingly placid. It didn’t even sound like his voice. Then, from his side, he lifted the gun and leveled it at her face. “Where is my daughter?”

Immediately, all the youth and sweetness was gone from her face. Her mouth twisted into an ugly grin, all teeth that gleamed in the fading light. Her braided hair made her look like a Viking witch about to cast dark spells over his entire family. “Oh, so you figured it out?” she said in a wretched voice he had never heard before. “You always were too smart for your own good, Sora Strife. I should have banned you from Kairi’s life when I had the chance.”

Her words were like a slap to his face. Deep inside, he had been harboring the fragile belief that maybe Roxas had been lying to him. How could Lilet’s own grandmother have kidnapped her? But he saw now that all the terrible things were true. 

Life was now a dark and ugly, twisted thing.

Sora bit his tongue to keep from crying and pushed the gun into Holly’s face. He could see his hand shaking and quickly lifted his other hand in an attempt to hold his aim steady, but it only made the gun feel colder and heavier. “Where is she?” he repeated. “Where is my daughter? Where is Lilet?”

Holly took a step back, eyes darting as if to beckon him and catching the light so that they glowed like lanterns, and Sora followed her into the dark recesses of her house even feeling that something terrible was about to happen to him. From behind, something struck him and the darkness of night rushed into the house as if greedy to consume him. 

…

Chief Axel Ryder dropped his service revolver on the floor beside Sora Strife’s fallen body as if disgusted by this and stood staring down at both fallen things for a long moment. Then, softly, he said, “This has to stop. This has gotten out of hand.”

Holly grabbed up both Axel’s and Sora’s revolvers from the floor and put both into her purse without bothering to check the safeties. “You’re right,” she said and her voice was still bitter and stone-hard. “Get him. We need to go.” 

Axel wanted to thinks he was going to end all this and let everything go back to the way it was, but he knew she wouldn’t. She still had that darkness in her voice, that cruelty, that hatred. He opened his mouth to protest, to put his foot down like the good virtuous righteous cop and deny her for the good of the cause, but he couldn’t. 

Holly silenced anything he might have been able to say with a sharp cruel glance and even more biting caustic words. “You know you’ll never get her back without me,” she snapped.

Axel turned his head to the side, hiding his expression from her view, but he could feel the air grow tight with Holly’s baneful gloating pride. She knew she had him… forever.   
Silently, he stooped, gathered up Lilet’s poor father in his strong arms, and cautiously hefted his unconscious body. Sora was lighter than he had expected and Axel wondered when his last good meal had been but then he tried not to think about it anymore. He banished those caring chief-of-police thoughts to the back of his mind and followed Holly out of her dark house. 

Before Holly let Axel put Sora in the backseat, she snapped Axel’s cuffs on her son-in-law’s thin wrists. Then, she slid behind the wheel and ordered Axel into the passenger seat. Without a choice, Axel climbed in beside the cruel woman and stared straight ahead while they drove to the seedy streets of Sunset City where this had all originated. 

…

While she drove, Holly put in a call to Bird-Man-Bill, her partner and a class-A fuck-up. 

At the beginning of all this, she had paid him to steal Lilet that day in the park, to take her away from Moon Valley, and to finally kill her. But he had failed! He had fucking failed!  
It turns out that Lilet Strife was a veritable Grand Duchess Anastasia. Rumors of Anastasia’s escape during the trials of Communist Russia had greatly been based on her sweetness and innocence. It was said that the guards who were supposed to kill her, just couldn’t, and so they let her escape. Hell, they even helped her escape. Lilet had managed to do nearly the same thing with even better results. She had managed to woo Bird-Man-Bill into letting her live and the great fool, thinking Holly would never find out he had not killed the child, let her loose on the streets of Sunset City.

Maybe Lilet would have been killed anyway in such a seedy city if it wasn’t for one infuriating unknown variable. 

Namine “White-Doll” Waters, the turned-around prostitute! Never in a million years would anyone have suspected Lilet would have found her way to the moon-white woman who happened to hand her neatly off to Roxas “Peter Pan Man” Donovan. 

Roxas would have safely gotten Lilet home to her glorious parents if it hadn’t been for a single monumental stroke of luck! When the call came in, Kairi was in the shower and Holly was sitting on the couch, watching television, since Sora had asked her to keep an eye on his wife while he was at work for the first time in almost a week. Holly had picked up the phone and Roxas explained to her that he had Lilet Strife in his possession, unharmed, and could someone from her family please come and get her safely. 

Holly, of course, had gone to the Peter Pan Diner and retrieved sweet unsuspecting Lilet. After all, what reason did the child have to fear her own grandmother? 

Holly cut her eyes to the Chief of Police sitting in the passenger seat, dejected and beaten down like a dog. Another stroke of luck had touched her in his case, as well. As it turned out, Holly was born with a knack for stealing precious things. Axel was only another victim kept neatly under her thumb by the threat of harm to his most precious person. He had come in even handier that she had originally suspected since Roxas Donovan called the police to report everyone who passed through is kind perfect little hands. Without Axel’s cooperation, Lilet may very well have thrown Holly into suspicious light when she never made it home that day. 

It had almost been too easy, except for these fucking people! Sora and Roxas and Namine pursuing this child to the ends of the earth!

“Bird-Man,” Holly snapped into the receiver and felt him wince on the other end of the line. “You’re so fucking stupid. This is all your fault. Prep that place. I’m on my way now.” Then, without waiting to hear his begging whimpering little answer, she hung up. 

Behind her, Sora made a small sound of pain, but she ignored him easily. 

She had no love for anything in this life.

…

Officer Riku Wise left the Peter Pan Diner shortly after coming to his epiphany, laying down rubber and spewing gravel at the mouth of the parking lot. Roxas Donovan was standing at the window with a phone pressed to his ear. Riku had had a moment of panic where he wondered exactly who Roxas was calling, but he knew the Peter Pan Man would never do anything detrimental. 

According to protocol, Riku should have gone straight to the station and reported Axel Ryder’s corruption, but he didn’t. 

Fuck protocol!

Since he knew Lilet Strife was involved, he should have gone to her parent’s house in Moon Valley, but he didn’t. 

Fuck that!

Instead, feeling as if a clock was hanging over his head and ticking on his life—down, down, down—tick, tick, tick—he raced off to Sunset City on a hunch. 

After all, cops were nothing without their hunches.

When he pulled down the main drag of Sunset City, he was suddenly glad he was in his personal vehicle. A cop car in this place would have sent this crowd scattering like roaches under too much light. He parked and got quickly out, scanning the bustling streets for anything that caught his eye. He had finally gotten used to seeing his white hair in his peripheral vision so, for a moment, he didn’t even see her. She blended in perfectly with the whiteness. 

“Riku,” Namine said sharply. “What the hell are you doing here? This is no place for a cop, even an off-duty one!” She put a cold white hand on his arm and jerked him around to face her. She was stronger than she looked. “Well?!” she demanded. 

“I had a hunch,” he said to her.

“A hunch?” she repeated and eyed him. Then, coldly, “Are you armed?”

He nodded and lifted his dark jacket to show her his shoulder holster and his Taser clipped to his belt. 

“Good,” she said. “Follow me.” Silently, weaving through the crowd like a fish through water, Namine brought Riku to her apartment building—an equally ugly and graffiti-covered redbrick building. She unlocked her door with a key she produced from her cleavage and ushered him inside. 

“Why’d you bring me here?” he asked once she had closed the door and drawn the blinds. 

Her eyes caught the light and gleamed as if infused with their own personal moons. 

She pressed against his body, ice-cold and burning-hot at the same time. Her breasts swelled over the cups of her bra and the hem of her shirt. Riku’s mouth watered as she put her hip to his crotch and ran her hands through his soft silvery tresses, pricking at his scalp with her nails so that goose bumps raised on his flesh. Then, she caught his mouth and kissed him fiercely, dominating him quickly and with ease. He pressed his hands to her back, melding her soft body to his, desperate to feel more of her even as his mind screamed that this wasn’t the time. 

Then, suddenly, she drew back, leaving him hanging. She walked towards the bed with her slender hips swaying, tantalizing and teasing. She was like a hit of a fierce drug and after that taste of her, he needed more. He followed her like a puppet on a string, but he didn’t get anymore of Namine. She had stopped whoring herself out a long time ago. Instead, she seductively touched him, snagged the Taser from his belt, and zapped him. Riku fell like a house of cards, sprawled at her feet like a fish out of water. 

“Sorry,” she said and gazed down at him. “But my gun is out of commission. I need another one.”

Riku made a few hoarse gasping-gurgling sounds, but Namine ignored him. She knelt beside him, unholstered his gun, fished through his pockets for extra magazines, dug out his badge, and laid everything she had collected on her bed. Then, she silently stripped and redressed in jeans and a plain black t-shirt, discarding her white-whore clothes as if she was never going to wear them again. Efficiently, she outfitted herself with Riku’s gear and left her apartment. 

She hadn’t taken his cuffs and Riku knew that she wasn’t going to be bringing any of the bad guys back alive. 

…

Kairi was still sitting in her car, crying and watching the people on the other side of the cold glass barrier. A long while ago, Bird-Man-Bill had crept into the dark warehouse across the street from where Kairi had parked. By now, prostitutes and pushers had filled that space and peels of neon lit up the dark inky sky.

She hadn’t seen Riku Wise pull in farther ahead on the street. 

She hadn’t seen Namine drag him away into her apartment building. 

She hadn’t seen Namine come back out dressed like a cop. 

But she did see her mother park across the street with Chief Axel Ryder in the passenger seat. 

She did see Axel drag her husband, cuffed and dazed, from the backseat. 

She did see them both lead Sora into a dark ugly warehouse. 

She did see Sora staggering as if he were hurt and then vanishing inside. 

Kairi grit her teeth. Someone had stolen her daughter from her. They were not going to take her husband from her, too! She rummaged around beneath the seats in search of a weapon, found a tire iron and a Maglite flashlight, hefted both in her hands, and decided on the flashlight since the warehouse was dark. Then, she scrambled out of her minivan, pushed her hair out of her face, and followed her husband into the very heart of darkness… into the very place her daughter had gone only a month before.

…

Only seconds behind Kairi Strife, Namine Waters followed.

… 

Just as Holly Hart, Chief Axel Ryder, Sora Strife, Kairi Strife, and Namine Waters vanished from the seedy streets into the dark warehouse, Roxas Donovan pulled in behind Kairi’s minivan, parked, and quickly got out of his car. He scanned the streets, but he was too late. He had no idea where they had gone.

…

Upstairs, weak and tingling, Riku Wise was standing at the window in Namine’s apartment, watching as everyone rushed into the warehouse. He saw Roxas get out and begin to look around and he wanted to call out, to tell Roxas where they had all gone, but the Taser had stunned him. He couldn’t get his voice working and he could barely stand. He croaked and gasped and breathed, praying that he could get himself back under control before it was too late.

X X X

Oh, I do know that forensics found out a little while ago that Anastasia actually never escaped like rumors said and she was found dead with her sister somewhere, but I wanted to use her story to compare with Lilet’s. So, no need to correct me everyone. I am aware… sadly… I kind of liked the idea of Anastasia being an unsolved mystery. 

Figure on fifteen chapters. This story came out very fast and is going to wind out very quickly.

So, everything becoming clear? Is everyone keeping up with me?

Questions, comments, concerns?


	13. Axel Ryder's Son, Sora Strife's Daughter

Hmm, I don’t have much to say except I’m teasing you. I’m so evil.

X X X

Axel Ryder had been a single father for ten years. 

But only five of those ten years had been with his son. 

He had spent two of those ten years with a flighty unhappy wife at his side, but she was more beautiful than she was motherly or even loving. And what did he expect anyway? He had met her during his days with the gang, promising to settle down and get a real job if she would love him. He had done everything he had promised, becoming a police officer and buying a nice house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and flower-boxes beneath the windows. Finally, though they rarely fought, she left him to do what she wanted with her life. Fucking free-to-be-you-and-me hippy flake! After she was gone, it was just Axel and his wonderful son alone in their house. 

At first, Axel didn’t know how he was going to manage what with his work and all, but he loved his son enough to work it out. He found a good middle-aged babysitter who was always willing to stay later or move her plans so long as he kept his fridge stocked with iced tea and his bookshelves full for her. Even with the reason he had become a cop out of his life, Axel remained a policeman and was quickly promoted to chief since he was such an asset to them with his inside-knowledge of Sunset City’s worst gang. 

Over time, Axel found he actually enjoyed snuffing out crime where he had created if before. 

Then, one night when Axel was working late on a hot case—pursuing the leader of his old gang, actually—and the babysitter was home with his sweet son alone, Bird-Man-Bill—as part of his initiation into that same gang—broke into Axel’s home, killed the kind babysitter, and stole Axel’s son. Axel came home to the slaughter and he was convinced he had died then. His life had become a half-life, demolished and devastated by the loss of his son.

Meanwhile, Bird-Man-Bill’s soft heart had been his undoing. He drove Axel’s son to the distant little town of Moon Valley and dumped him alone on what just happened to be Holly’s street. That was how Holly became addicted to the worst crime. She loved other people’s children, loved how she could torment them until the loved and feared her, but they could never escape into the arms of friends like her wretch Kairi had.

Bird-Man-Bill was a crook, but not a crook. He was spineless and shivery, easily conned and tricked and bought off. Often, before Holly stole his son and began blackmailing Axel, he had used Bird-Man as a contact within the gang. So, he was a criminal, but he never operated on his own. He was a dog to the people smarter and crueler than him. 

Holly Hart, on the other hand, was a monster in her own sick demented right. She preyed on other people’s children because she believed hers had been stolen from her by Sora Strife. But even then, her reasoning was all wrong because Kairi had never been taken away from her. Holly herself had pushed Kairi away with her hatred for her grandchild born of rape, sweet innocent Lilet. Sora just happened to be her wonderful best friend and supported her wonderfully so that she didn’t need her torturous mother.

What Holly had to her advantage, she looked like a sweet kind grandmotherly woman and she had perfected her art over time. She only preyed on children who had already been stolen from their parents by other people or by fate. She found them wandering lost, took them for ice cream, and then murdered them in her own simple way. 

Why she did it though, Axel had realized over these long years while he missed his son was that Holly believed that if Lilet had never happened, Kairi would have stayed under her mother’s thumb forever. It was all because of Lilet… because she believed Lilet had stolen Kairi from her. It was what had driven her to pay Bird-Man-Bill to steal Lilet that day at Moon Lake. 

But, like with Axel’s son, like that first time, Bird-Man-Bill’s soft heart had been his undoing. He could not kill a child. 

…

There were many types of criminals in the world. Some were completely evil—devils in disguise, wolves in sheep’s clothing. Some were white avenging angels—fathers avenging raped daughters, mothers rescuing stolen children. Some toed the line between good and evil—like sneaky, tricky Namine “White-Doll” Waters.

Bird-Man-Bill was a simple dog, unable to think or plot for himself.

Axel Ryder was a man of the law but allowed Holly Hart to torment and blackmail him with his son. 

Namine Waters might have posed as White-Doll and slaughtered criminals and that was technically ‘bad,’ but she did it for all the right reasons. 

Holly Hart preyed on innocent children. (She was Namine’s polar opposite. Hell, she was even opposite to stupid Bird-Man-Bill who could kill anyone except a child.)

But Holly was a different kind of criminal…

Holly was a monster!

Holly was the worst kind of monster!

She was the monster who believed she was completely justified in the horrible things she did. 

…

Standing in Namine’s apartment at the window, leaning heavily on the sill to support himself, Officer Riku Wise looked down on the dark streets of seedy neon-glowing Sunset City. Finally, Riku got feeling back into all his extremities. He staggered to his feet, plastered his face into the door when he stumbled over his own feet, lurched out of Namine’s apartment, stumbled down the hallway, and fell down the sixteen steps on his ass. Unhurt save his pride, he blundered onto the street and looked around in search of Roxas Donovan. A prostitute hung on his arm, cooing and pressing her full breasts against him, but he shook her off. 

“Roxas!” Riku shouted, but his voice came out more like a croaking gasping wheeze. He worked up some saliva, cupped his hands around his mouth, and tried again. “Roxas!” he yelled. His voice echoed through the throbbing night and bounced back to him, amplified by the brick buildings. “Roxas!”

A blonde head bobbed through the crowd, hair tousled and sticking up wildly as if slept on, and Roxas appeared in front of Riku like an apparition through the strange and beautiful people. His blue eyes were like shards of a ghost-mirror-sky-reflected-on-water, haunted, and looked almost bruised as they caught the darkness of the night and petals of blood-red neon. Riku was beginning to understand how Roxas and Namine managed to be friends. They were both like ghosts—not quite in this world, not quite out of it. 

“Riku?” Roxas asked and took a hold of Riku’s forearm because the cop was wavering on his feet, still tingling from the aftereffects of the electricity Namine had pumped through his system. “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know. I had a hunch.” Riku staggered sideways, grabbing at Roxas’s heavy denim coat to prevent himself from falling. 

“What happened to you?” Roxas asked and guided Riku to lean against a wall without so much as blinking even as the bigger man practically stripped him of his jacket. He was as used to dealing with unsteady people as a bartender. 

“I ran into Namine.” Riku sputtered, remembering her burning sharp voice as she told him she didn’t answer to that name anymore. “I mean, White-Doll.”

Roxas wrinkled his brow, blue eyes dark and perplexed. “She wouldn’t have hurt you,” he said as if to convince Riku that he was wrong.

Riku nodded, silvery moon-white hair shining in his peripheral vision. “I know, but she tased me and took my gun and my badge.”

Roxas’s face went white and he swore, “Shit! She’s going to kill them!” He whirled away from Riku, scanning the faces of the crowd and the lit and unlit windows of all the buildings along the street, but nothing was there to catch his eye—not a beautiful moon-white woman, a crook with sharp bird eyes, a tormented father and mother, or a cruel grandmother. The street was empty of such people.

“I know,” Riku said because he didn’t know what else to say. Namine had taken everything but his cuffs. 

“We need to find her,” Roxas said sharply and took a step away from Riku as if reeled in like a big fish by an invisible line.

Riku grabbed Roxas’s arm, practically falling on his face as he threw his weight around. 

Again, Roxas grabbed him and heaved him upright, leaning him against the graffiti-covered redbrick wall of Namine’s apartment building like a broken umbrella. “Stop it,” he scolded as if he was speaking with a small child or an invalid. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“She went into that warehouse,” Riku panted. He was feeling dizzy suddenly, light-headed. “I was…” he lost his train of thought and Roxas looked at him expectantly. “I was watching from the window,” he forced out finally.

Roxas looked doubtfully at the dark broken and boarded-up windows and asked, “Are you sure?”

Riku nodded, green eyes swimming in and out of focus. Roxas’s pale handsome face and ghost eyes blurred as if on the other side of a window sheeted with rain. 

“You’ll have to stay here,” Roxas said almost gently. His voice sounded as if it were coming from very far away. “You’ll be of no use to me like this.”

“I understand,” Riku though he said, but Roxas acted as if he hadn’t heard him. “I understand,” Riku repeated blearily.

Roxas carefully leaned him against the wall, gave him one quick glance, dashed to his car, hauled out a shotgun, and hurried across the street towards the dark warehouse. Riku wanted to follow him and took a single step to follow, but a wave of dizziness washed over him and he passed out on the cold concrete. 

…

Holly Hart had never taken Axel to the place where she had hidden his precious son, only threatened him with terrible things—death, dismemberment, sex. She had chosen to leave such a place open to Axel’s rampant imagination as a psychological trick and it was a good one. Axel had spent many nights lying awake, just wondering where his son was hidden from him. Never in a million years would he have imagined a place like the dark deserted warehouse in Sunset City. 

Inside, there were cages—big iron animal cages like something that belonged in the back of the worst circuses. Inside, hunkered down, were children of all ages, races, and genders. Axel vainly searched the dirty faces for his son, but to no avail. He couldn’t find his son in this darkness, especially not with poor Sora Strife leaning so hard into him. Desperately, Axel held the other man close to his side, taking comfort in shared pain as Holly led them deeper into darkness.

“Put him in the cage,” Holly snapped.

Axel’s heart skipped a few beats. “W-Where is my son?”

Holly’s eyes narrowed. “Put him in the cage,” she snarled. 

Sora’s eyes were still bleary, unfocused, pained. Maybe he had a concussion.

Swallowing thickly, Axel carefully eased Sora into the empty animal cage. Once the iron door slammed shut, Sora came abruptly to his senses. It was like a curtain being lifted. “Holly!” He shouted and hurled himself at the bars so hard that he bounced back down onto his ass. “Where is Lilet?! Where is she?!” His voice echoed in the empty warehouse, drawing Sora’s blue eyes to scan the dim space. He saw the other cages and the children’s dirty faces in the faint light. Sora choked and whispered, “How could you do this?”

A small voice whispered, “Daddy?”

…

Kairi Strife slunk like a stray black cat through the dimness of the warehouse, following her mother, husband, and the police chief—Axel Ryder—who had come to her house with those pictures. From between the bars of the animal cages, children peered out at her. She pressed a finger to her lips, pleading with them to be quiet and adjusted the Maglite in her hands. Someone clutched at her elbow and Kairi’s heart leaped into her throat. 

“Lilet?” she whispered, but it was a small boy was might have been twelve. It was hard to tell beneath the filth and fear in his face.

“Help us,” he whispered. “That woman is here… Whenever she comes, she takes one of us, and they never come back.”

“What?” Kairi whispered back. “What woman?”

“Holly…”

Kairi’s heart skipped several beats. “Holly?” she repeated, shocked.

The child nodded, green eyes glowing in the dark. “She hugs us, but it’s not good. This is a bad place.”

Kairi pried the little fingers from her elbow because Axel had just thrown her husband into a cage and Sora was shouting. “Don’t worry,” she whispered without looking at the child. “It’s all going to be over soon. Don’t worry. I have to go, but I’ll be back.”

“Wait!”

Kairi turned back. 

The child reached through the bars of the cage and touched her soft red tresses, then her heart-shaped face, caressing her cheeks. “You’re so pretty. You must be Lilet’s mom,” the child whispered. 

“Lilet?!” Kairi choked on the name. 

The child nodded. “Yes. She told me to tell you something—” 

But the child never got to complete the message because gunfire in the dark warehouse was as loud as canon fire. Startled, Kairi fell over herself, the Maglite skittering across the cold concrete floor and almost out of reach. Kairi snatched it up, clutching it to her chest, and peered desperately through the gloom. Who had been shot? What had happened?

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	14. Holly Hart: The Monster!

There are a ton of perspective changes in this chapter so try to keep up everyone! I know you can do it!

X X X

The shot tore into the ceiling of the warehouse. The ceiling was half-rotten and aged on top of that so that bullet ripped through the shingles and support beams like a hot knife cutting butter. Seconds later, the tattered ceiling crashed down and faint neon light streamed down through the freshly-made skylight. Some sounds of the city floated in and the deathly silence of the warehouse was broken. Through the hole, the night was dark and endless.

…

A few minutes before the shot shattered the other-worldly silence of the dim warehouse and created a moon-roof in the ceiling, the small little voice whispered, “Daddy?”

Sora Strife didn’t react, just kept throwing himself at the bars of the cage his mother-in-law had imprisoned him in. It wasn’t a girl’s voice. It wasn’t his daughter. It wasn’t Lilet. 

But Axel Ryder did. It was a sweet familiar voice that he had lived the past five years of his life without. It was his son! Axel whirled around, green eyes scanning for the familiar baby face, but no familiar face looked out at him from between the bars. The only thing familiar about this child’s face were the sparkling jade-green eyes and they way they welled up with desperate tears. 

“Daddy,” the child said again, brokenly.

Axel turned into Sora and threw himself at the bars of the cage, reaching through to desperately embrace the child he hadn’t see in so many long years. “Lea,” he said and hugged his son as hard as he could with the bars separating them. The child felt so thin, like a bag of bones, and was trembling wildly like a leaf caught in a gale. 

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” Lea sobbed, hugging the father he barely remembered. “Daddy, Daddy!”

“How touching.” 

Holly’s voice was like ice down Axel’s spine and he wanted to turn around right now, to scream in her face, to tear her apart limb by limb, but he didn’t. He just held his son tightly in his arms. He could feel Sora’s injured eyes on him like a damaged butterfly. Then, even more real than Sora’s eyes on him, Holly put a cold revolver to his cheek so lightly it was like a kiss. 

“Get up. Get away from there,” she snapped. 

Then, the blast tore through the ceiling of the warehouse and some tattered pieces of ceiling crashed to the floor like the sound of cannon fire. A plume of white plaster and hard shingles flew through the air, clouding it like interior weather. Whirling around, Holly brandished the revolver at the fallen ceiling, shouting so that her voice echoed throughout the warehouse. Axel tightened his grip on his son and Sora hunkered down in the cage like a kicked puppy. Holly continued her shouting and flailing, demanding the unknown terrorist reveal themselves, but when no one did, she turned her attention coldly back to Axel and his long-stolen son. 

“Get up,” she snapped at Axel again. “Get away from the kid.”

“No, Daddy. Please, protect me,” Lea whispered desperately. “Don’t let her take me! When she takes someone, they never come back.”

Painfully, feeling his flesh tear at the seams, Axel forced himself to pull away from his son and turned to face Holly. She had a barrel of the revolver at his throat and she was grinning that sick cruel smile at him.

“You’re going to kill these children?” Axel whispered. “You’ve already killed some of these children?”

Holly grinned. “Do you know that feeling of having them love you? Of course you do, you’re a parent for however short a time. Do you remember how if they scrape their knees and if you put a Band-Aid on the blood, it’s like being God? Parents are Gods in the eyes of children,” she barked a hollow evil laugh. “When you hold their lives in your hands, they love you so much in those last moments. I…” she looked around the darkness at the caged children, at the little pointed faces, and grinned. “I am God!” To aid in her dramatics, she pulled a remote from her pockets and turned on the lights.

…

The sound of gunfire sent Namine Waters down on her belly like a snake, elbows tucked in so that she could easily crawl and hostler digging in beneath her armpit. The concrete skinned her almost to the bone, but it didn’t matter. She had been through plenty of pain in her life and a little missing skin was nothing to her. She had flattened herself out so fast it was almost as if she had military training. She sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, crawled a few feet, heaved herself into a crouch, and put her back against the cold concrete wall. Since this was going downhill so very fast, she yanked Riku’s service revolver from its holster and gripped it tightly in her white hands. Then, she glanced around, searching for whoever had fired off a shot.

For a moment, she couldn’t make out anything in the darkness save the dirty faces of children caged like animals. She felt like a beam of moonlight in the darkness, so visible, so exposed. She was wishing she had had time to smear black bruise make-up on her porcelain-white skin and put her platinum tresses beneath a black knit cap. But she hadn’t had time so she was sticking out like a sore thumb. Not that it mattered, though, because Holly, Axel, and Sora were all shouting at each other and shouting into the darkness. It seemed none of them had fired off the shot because they were demanding whoever had reveal themselves. Finally, Holly turned her attention away from the cloud of plaster dust and shingles. 

Beside Namine, in the deep dark corner, there was movement in the darkness. The shadows shifted and a person slunk out of them like a phantom. She almost put her stolen weapon in Roxas’s face before she realized it was him. 

“Roxas!” she hissed. “What the hell are you doing?”

He put a hand on her arm and his fingers were icy-cold and wet. The smell of blood touched Namine’s nose, bathing the inside of her mouth in that sickening metal aroma. She reached out, white hands gleaming so that Roxas quickly covered them with his own. 

“I’m okay. I’m the one that fired the shot,” he said and his voice was rough with pain. 

“Did you hit yourself?”

He shook his head. “No, but the kick knocked me on my ass. I think I have a concussion where I smashed my head on the wall,” he explained to her doubtful look. “I’m a restaurateur, not a mercenary!”

Namine stifled a small sound of amusement. “You’re stupid. What are you carrying?”

“A shotgun.”

“What kind?” she persisted, voice tight. 

He blinked, slow and catlike so that his blue eyes looked like small twin planets caught in orbit. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s a shotgun.”

“Give it to me.” Namine shuffled it from his hands, revealing a typical home-owner’s special in the lowlight, and popped open the barrel. Inside, there was a single round and one that was only the shell. She removed the shell, fished through Roxas’s pockets, and found an entire box of ammunition. She reloaded the shotgun and put the ammo in her cleavage because her jeans were too tight to fit them in her pockets. “Are you a good shot?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Well, fairly.”

“What were you aiming for when you fired that first time?”

“Nothing. It was a warning shot. I was aiming for the ceiling,” he said. 

Namine passed him Riku’s small service revolver and pressed the shotgun into her shoulder, checking the sights. It was difficult in the darkness, but they looked alright. “I’ll take this. I can shoot it,” she said. “And you take that. Come on, let’s go.” She put the strap over her shoulders, got down on her belly, and began the slow cautious crawl. Behind her, she could hear Roxas scrabbling around behind her and was about to turn around and tell him to ‘shut up!’ when the entire dark warehouse was flooded with bright fluorescent lights. 

Namine froze as all the shadows that had been hiding them vanished.

…

“I am God!” With the aid of the fluorescent lights, it became apparent that there were not as many children caged in the warehouse as it had originally appeared. There were maybe five, no more and no less. But there were so many cages that the floor looked like a forest of iron bars that effectively hid Namine, Roxas, and Kairi. Even so, Axel felt sick and he saw Sora’s tragic cerulean-sky-blue eyes staring at him over Holly’s shoulder in that iron cage. 

“You’re sick, Holly,” Axel whispered.

Without warning, she slammed the revolver across his face and Axel crashed to the floor like a felled tree. His head cracked against one of the empty cages, ringing like a gong, and a sound of anguish tore from his lips. 

“No! Daddy, no!” Lea begged and reached through the bars to touch his fallen father. 

“Leave him,” Holly snapped at the child and Lea shrunk back as if physically struck. Tears welled up in those green eyes and Holly knelt to stroke the child’s face. “He’s just a tainted cop. He’s no good to you, no good to anybody. He couldn’t have saved you anyway.” Then, she leveled the gun into the child’s stomach and grinned. “You’re no use to me now either,” she said.

“No!” Axel shouted, but there was nothing he could do to save his son. He was stunned from the blow to the face and back of his head. It was hard to tell if his hair was that red or if that was just blood.

Sora, on the other hand, had been biding his moment to strike, lying in wait like a coiled snake. At some point, he had shimmied over his bound wrists and gotten them loose from behind his back to in front of him. Now, he reached through the bars and threw his cuffed hands around Holly’s throat. He jerked back on her so hard that it was a wonder he didn’t break her neck. Holly’s twisted eyes bugged out of her head and a small animalistic squeal of surprise issued from her ugly mouth as she slammed backwards into the cage.   
Suddenly, in a feat of remarkable agility, she twisted the gun around and fired two shots in Sora’s general direction. One bullet tore into Sora’s shoulder and his grip on her weakened. Holly tried to jerk away, but Sora dug his fingers into her, clutching her desperately. 

She fired off four more shots behind her head blindly at Sora until the chamber of the revolver clicked empty. The extra four shots were enough and it was a miracle she didn’t splatter Sora’s brains all over the wall. Instead, she caught him in the shoulder again and then managed to tear away. 

Staggering and gasping, Holly dug through her purse and yanked out the second revolver. “You monster! This is all your fault! You took her away from me!” she shrieked at Sora and leveled the gun at his face. Like this, from this small distance, there was no way she could miss. 

Gunfire tore through the building.

…

Outside, on the streets of Sunset City, Namine’s two prostitute friends—Jackie and Amber—found Riku Wise lying unconscious in the street. This was Sunset City and no one here would call an ambulance, but Amber had called for White-Doll back when Bird-Man-Bill had clubbed her in the face. Now, in her towering heels and short skirt, she crouched at Riku’s side and touched his throat, feeling for his pulse.

“He’s alive,” she said to Jackie, looking up into the older woman’s face.

“So?” Jackie blew a ring of smoke into the still night air. 

“Shouldn’t we call someone?” Amber asked. “You know, for him like we did for White-Doll?”

“White-Doll is one of our own,” Jackie said as if that explained it all. 

Amber straightened up, looking down at Riku. “Shouldn’t we call someone?” she repeated.

“Do what you want, Amber. I can’t stop you,” Jackie snapped and ground out her cigarette under the toe of her high heels. She turned and walked off into the crowd, vanishing quickly.

Amber was reluctant to leave the fallen silver-haired man so she shouted after her friend. “Wait, Jackie!” 

Jackie stopped, glaring back at her over the heads of the people between them. “Are you going to call or not?”

Amber bit her heavily-painted lip, followed Jackie to a payphone nearby, and lifted the receiver from the cradle. Across the street, the lighted warehouse was so bright that it looked as if it belonged in another dimension that possessed thousands of suns and, inside, there was gunfire.

…

Kairi peeked through the iron forest of bars. She could see her mother brandishing a second revolver at her sweet Sora’s panicked face. On the floor, Chief Axel Ryder was sprawled and there was a lot of blood on the back of his shirt. Beside him, a green-eyed child was crying out, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” Kairi tightened her grip on the flashlight, found her palms to be far too sweaty, wiped them on her jeans, and got slowly to her feet. 

Behind her, there was a strong wild shout of, “Stop! Police! Drop your weapons!”

The big Maglite flashlight slipped from her damp hands and crashed onto the concrete floor with the sound of breaking glass. The bulb came brightly on when it hit the floor like a ball of lightning, rocketing through the air. Then, the bulb cracked open and went sharply out. Kairi whirled around, desperate to face the police and have them help her…

But it wasn’t the police.

…

Namine Waters knew she wouldn’t fool anyone posing as a police officer, not now, not as she was. Her lips were permanently stained from lipstick and she still had faint bruises on her face from when Bird-Man-Bill had clubbed her across the face and she was stick-thin. She looked like a whore, like a useless skinny whore. She also knew that Axel and Sora would both recognize her and know she was no police officer, but she was hoping to fool Holly who had never seen her before. 

Even one advantageous moment of surprise might turn the table for them. She fit the shotgun into her shoulder and let her voice ring through the warehouse a second time. “Police! Drop your weapons or I’ll shoot! Stop!”

There was a redheaded woman that looked so familiar between Namine and Sora, Axel, and Holly. She had eyes like twilight that were lost and distraught, but also surprisingly hopeful. There was a shattered Maglite at her small feet. Namine tipped her head, hoping this woman would move out of the way and give her a clear shot. 

“It’s you,” the redhead whispered. 

Behind the woman Namine had saved as a raped-beaten-teenager in the alleyway, Holly whirled and pointed the gun at Namine. Her evil little eyes were wild, shining in the ugly fluorescent lighting overhead and covered in deep dark shadows. She looked like a monster risen from the open rifts of Hell and that was exactly what she was. 

A monster from Hell!

“Get out of the way!” Namine shouted. She wanted to shoot Holly now—right in her fucking face—but she had given Roxas the revolver and she wouldn’t be able to take a precise shot with the shotgun. Shotguns weren’t meant for that. They were meant for getting close, not aiming. “Get out of the way!”

…

Holly saw her beautiful daughter’s face standing between her and the moon-white cop. She remembered Kairi saying something about a moon-white woman saving her in that alley the night Lilet happened and a terrible rage filled her up to the brim. Like Sora, this woman had stolen Kairi from Holly in her own way. What if Holly had been the one to find and save Kairi instead of the moon-white woman-cop? An enraged animal cry spilled from Holly’s lips and she pulled the trigger. 

…

“No!” Roxas shouted from the shadows, clutching the revolver in his shaky hands. The bullet zinged past Namine’s face by a hair and sliced a thin papery wound across her high cheekbone. The blood looked like a twisted night-blooming flower from a horror movie, like a vampire’s kiss on her porcelain-white cheek, and a need Roxas had never felt welled up in his chest—the need to protect!

…

Kairi had heeded Namine’s warning and dove to the ground, rolling around in the broken glass of the Maglite, but Namine hadn’t followed her own advice. 

She staggered backwards as the bullet whipped through her platinum tresses, stirring them like the phantom hand of the Black Reaper had touched her, and ricocheted off the concrete wall behind her to stick somewhere else. She winced at the sting in her face, but did not drop the shotgun and press her white hand to her tore cheek. Instead, she squinted through the sights of the shotgun and weighed the risks of taking a shot now.

…

“No!”

Sora and Axel both respectively threw themselves to their feet. Sora’s progress was quickly halted by the iron bars of his cage and Axel was unsteady on his feet from the blows to his head. He felt small childish hands on his back, pushing him desperately upright. Axel threw himself into Holly so that they both went grappling across the floor like a pair of sumo wrestlers. The gun flew from Holly’s fingers and skittered across the floor like a black rat. 

The pain from his twice-shot shoulder tore a cry of anguish from Sora’s mouth as he struck the bars and he clutched desperately at the oozing wounds. He felt useless as he gritted his teeth in agony. He wanted to help Axel disable Holly, but not only was he hurt but he was caged like an animal. 

Not that Axel appeared to need any assistance anyway, but just in case… He looked up to see not only Namine, but Roxas and even his wife. He tried to smile, but it was too difficult. This was not a happy-smiling situation regardless of who showed up to help. 

…

Axel punched Holly hard across the face, abandoning his pledge never to hit a woman. This woman was a monster who had stolen his son from him and then blackmailed him into betraying good people like Sora and Kairi Strife. Now, who knew if they’d ever find their little girl? Maybe she was here in this warehouse, but maybe she wasn’t. There was no way to tell just yet. Again, Axel punched her and her heard her teeth knocking together. Her nose was bleeding and she was weakly pushing at his face with her cold claw-like hands. He decided that she was subdued and started to get up, but that was when Holly played the dirtiest of all women’s tricks.

She kicked him in the nuts. 

…

Axel gave an agonized yell and fell away from Holly as if he had tumbled off into the abyss, clutching himself with both hands. Blood smeared across the grey concrete beneath his head and Sora saw his green eyes roll up into his head—unconscious.

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” Lea whimpered and reached through the bars of his cage opposite his father. Torturously, the child could not reach Axel no matter how hard he stretched. 

Namine darted towards Holly at top speed, bearing down on her like a vengeful angel dressed in black and armed to the teeth with stolen police gear. Her pale hair was streaming and blood was running down her porcelain-pale face. She skidded to a stop just feet from Holly and leveled the barrel of the shotgun at the evil woman’s face. “Die, bitch,” she said sharply and her voice was like the edge of a knife.

Holly quivered in the face of Namine’s purpose. She knew without a doubt that this woman could kill her without batting an eyelash. She sucked in a sharp breath and allowed her swollen eyes to well up with tears, even knowing that they would not sway Namine. Behind this moon-white woman was a man who would definitely be swayed by tears and she begged, “Please, have mercy, don’t kill me.”

“Say goodbye,” was all Namine “White-Doll” Waters said. 

Roxas “Peter Pan Man” Donovan, on the other hand, shrieked, “No!” and tackled Namine from the side. He clutched her around the waist, preventing her from aiming again at Holly’s lowered battered face. “You mustn’t kill her! She’s trying to repent!”

That was all Holly needed.

Holly rolled over and scrambled for her gun. Sora snatched at it, but it was just out of reach and he was still trapped in the cage. His bloodied fingers were inches from the cold black metal and he had never wanted something so evil in his possession in his entire life. 

…

Axel was still writhing in agony on the floor, clutching his most tender place. 

…

Kairi grabbed her shattered Maglite and hurled it into the fray, suddenly thankful for all the hopeless batting practice she had spent with Lilet what felt like an eternity ago. Her aim was always spot on, but Lilet had been a hopeless swing. As she expected, the heavy flashlight whizzed past Namine and Roxas and struck Holly in the back of the head with the force of a Mac truck. 

Holly cried out, but she was far from finished. She grabbed up the gun and whirled, squeezing off shots even as she turned. The bullets bounced off cages, the ceiling, the walls, and the concrete floor. A bullet caught Roxas in the thigh and his grip on Namine weakened considerably as he went down on his knees. 

Namine almost grabbed him, almost caught him because he was her friend and she cared for him, but then her brain kicked back into gear. She might not get another moment like this since Holly was proving to be practically indestructible. She tore away from Roxas, jerking the shotgun from his restraining hands and letting him tumble to the concrete floor because he wouldn’t be hurt any worse than a skinned knee, and leveled the gun at Holly’s tear-streaked face. She almost felt bad, but then her heart hardened as she heard Axel’s son whispering ‘Daddy’ over and over and over. 

Fuck this! she thought, the bitch is more than dead. She’s on borrowed time now! Then, Namine pulled the trigger and there was nothing but brains, blood, and bone all over the cold concrete floor. 

…

Beside Namine, Roxas knelt to help Axel sit up and Kairi reached desperately through the bars of Sora’s cage to press at his wounds, sobbing and whispering his name. Sora had on a resolute smile that was mostly pain and horror. In the small moment of calm, Namine took a moment to wonder where Bird-Man-Bill had gotten to as she wiped some hot blood off her face. She knew he had been here, but now he was gone. Somehow, the maggots that feasted on the carcass always managed to get away scot-free while the predator was killed at the scene by someone bigger and stronger. Sure enough, Bird-Man-Bill was gone from the warehouse.

…

Outside, the streets of Sunset City were quiet and deserted. The residents had scattered like roaches at the threat of policemen since someone had called an ambulance for the strange moon-haired man passed out on the street. There were sirens and the flash of blue-and-red lights in the distance, reflecting on the underbelly of thick storm clouds that had suddenly rolled in. Then, the police came screaming into the city with their flashing lights and sirens and the ambulance right behind them with its accompanying fire truck. The caravan of law enforcement arrived just in time to hear Namine’s final shot echo through the night even as the paramedics rushed to help the fallen Riku Wise.

X X X

Did everyone keep up with me?

This was a crazy long chapter and all those changes in perspective were getting so hard to keep straight. I rather like the ending. (I was going to have Sora or Kairi shoot Holly, but the more I wrote the more it just didn’t seem to fit. I think Namine makes a good killer anyway.) So, next chapter will probably be the last one unless something unpredictable happens. 

Questions, comments, concerns? (Look, the perspective changes have even crept into my author’s note.)


	15. Lilet Never Happened

I can’t believe how fast this story got finished. I’ve been mowing my ideas lately. What the heck, man? I can’t make a story last more than a month and they’re all of substantial length and full of plot. And the some of you can’t write a single chapter in a month! What the heck is my problem?!

X X X

Kairi didn’t know if she would be able to handle the aftershock of the situation as calmly as Axel Ryder was if she was in his shoes, but maybe that was why he was Chief of Police and why she was a simple housewife with a missing daughter. Axel was the kind of person who grew calmer and more clear-headed as a situation progressed rather than increasing his panic. After Roxas heaved Axel up onto his feet and he stopped clutching his balls, he took the service revolver Roxas was holding and went quietly to each cage and shot off the padlocks. Then, even more calmly, he gathered up the children in his arms and spoke quietly to each of them, asking who their parents were and how long they had been here and the like. Roxas went to help him with the children while Kairi and Sora hugged each other tightly. 

Lilet was not among the caged children. 

Namine stood to the back of the group, carefully wiping her fingerprints from the shotgun and then tossing it down on the floor. She glanced at each of them, pulled off her bloodied shirt, wiped her face with it, and sneaked out of the building like a stray cat. After all, she couldn’t be caught here with blood on her hands. Even Axel wouldn’t be able to protect White-Doll, the killer’s killer, then. 

A few moments later, the police that had been called by Amber for Officer Riku Wise barged in with all their guns drawn, shouting and wary, having heard the gunfire. They all recognized Chief Axel Ryder immediately and lowered their weapons to ask him what the Hell had happened when they spotted the dirty children, the dead woman, and the three civilians. Axel explained the situation to them in a nutshell, leaving out the part where Namine blew Holly’s brains out. He took both the credit and blame for that. 

Then, the officers and paramedics cleared the warehouse of the children and twice-shot Sora Strife, taking them out to the ambulance for medical treatment and care. Roxas went with the children, soothing them and whispering sweet comforting nothings. Only Axel’s son, Lea, and Kairi remained in the warehouse, alone in the gleaming fluorescent lights while the police officers scooped up each discarded weapon and packaged Holly’s dead body. 

…

In the ambulance, laid out on a stretcher, Riku Wise came awake slowly. He was disoriented and confused. The last thing he remembered was Namine “White-Doll” Waters seducing and Tasing him, talking to Roxas Donovan, and then… nothing. It was just the abyss of black unconsciousness. 

“What happened?” he croaked. 

Through the open ambulance doors he could see a flurry of activity. There were police and paramedics. Two medics were leading out Sora Strife, bloodied and battered. Roxas Donovan was leading a small herd of dirty-faced starved-looking children. What had happened while he was unconscious?

“What happened?” he repeated.

A medic appeared at his side, asking him the standard questions, but Riku easily answered them. He wasn’t brain damaged, just confused. 

“What happened?”

“It’s a sad story,” the medic said. “That girl who went missing over a month ago, well, it turns out her grandmother was the one who stole her.”

“Her grandmother?”

The medic nodded.

Riku felt very sad, almost broken-hearted at the state of the twisted sick world. What had it come to? A sweet little girl had been stolen from her loving family by someone that thought they could trust, by her own grandmother. What the hell was wrong with this world? 

Riku decided he was going to resign from the force as soon as he could. He was tired of not being able to stop these kinds of crimes before they happened or at least help the innocent victims. He decided he would join Roxas Donovan in Sunrise Town, working happily at the Peter Pan Diner beside good Roxas or maybe being a contact on the street like White-Doll, bringing these people in so that they could be saved. Either way, he was finished with the hopeless life as a beaten-down cop. 

…

“Mrs. Strife,” Axle murmured. “Would you like to walk through with me?” he asked because Kairi was obsessively staring at the policemen as they zipped her mother up in a big black body bag. 

She nodded, tears burning in her eyes. 

Axel didn’t know what to say to this poor woman, but thankfully his son took the lead. Lea gripped Kairi’s hand in his small one and said softly, with that complete tenderness that only children possessed, “There’s something you have to see.” 

“What, sweetheart?” Kairi whispered.

Lea gently pulled her to a small door that was mostly hidden by deep shadows, glancing back when his father lagged behind them. Axel caught up quickly, taking Lea’s other hand and giving it a gentle squeeze. Kairi jealously looked at them, wondering where her daughter was, and opened the door when Lea asked. Immediately, the smell of decay flooded out of the dim room and Kairi’s heart stopped beating. When Lea flicked on the light, a soft amber glow flooded the room and revealed a beautiful child-sized coffin on a low table covered in red silk.

“No,” Kairi whispered desperately. She let out a heart-wrenching scream and ran to the coffin, tearing it open. She reached into the coffin, lifting out the decaying body and clutching it to her chest. There was no mistaking the fall of red tresses or half-open twilight-blue dead eyes. “No, no, no, no, no! Oh, God, please, no!” she howled, screamed, and sobbed.

She didn’t feel Axel tearing the dead child from her arms, yanking her back, shouting her name. Then, suddenly, there was a small prick in her neck, like a pinch. Then, blackness consumed her and even the terror of Lilet’s death fell away. 

…

Roxas Donovan was sitting with the poor caged children, helping the paramedics wipe the grim from their faces and swaddling them in warm heavy blankets. There were only four of them—four sweet little children who were missing their families. If they had been at the Peter Pan Diner, he would had fed them pie and ice cream and whatever else they wanted, but he didn’t have his home-field advantage. So instead, he settled for hugging and rubbing and touching them and they were all eager to be held and loved. They pressed eagerly to him like small puppies and he hugged them tightly to his flanks. 

He looked across the street and saw Namine standing at the window of her apartment in her bra, looking down at him with that ageless look in her beautiful blue eyes. He wanted to wave to her, but he didn’t was the police to notice and question her. Instead, he just passed her a small smile through the vastness of the dark night.

“Roxas,” one of the children whispered. “Who’s the angel God sent to kill that evil woman?”

“No, sweetheart,” Roxas said. “Axel killed Holly.”

The children all looked at him, used to being lied to so Roxas lowered his head towards them conspiratorially and confessed, “Yes, God sent and angel to kill Holly, but you mustn’t tell the police that. God can’t send his angels if the police know about them so you must tell everyone that Chief Axel shot the evil woman.”

The children all nodded, bright eyed and happy. They nestled close to Roxas, staring up at the moon’s beautiful porcelain face. 

In her apartment, Namine let the curtains slip closed and she was gone like a wisp of mist. 

For a moment, Roxas considered the implications of his words. He had tried to stop Namine from killing Holly, thinking she had repented for her crimes and wanted to be forgiven. Instead, the evil woman had pulled a cruel trick on him and he had fallen right into it. If Namine hadn’t torn away from him, maybe Holly would have killed them all. Who knew, maybe Namine was an avenging angel sent down by God, gifted with the ability to see through lies and the strong heart that remained untainted by her kills.

…

Sitting on the back bumper of the ambulance, feeling pretty good since the paramedics had given him some Morphine to take the edge off the bullets embedded in his shoulder, Sora heard his wife begin to scream. Her cries cut through the night, more haunting than her voice had been the night she called him to say that Lilet was gone and she needed him home. Immediately, he knew that she had found Lilet somewhere in the darkness of that warehouse and that Lilet was dead. Dead! Tears burned in his sky-colored eyes and clogged up his throat, but all along, he had known the truth. He knew that his precious daughter was never coming home alive. 

In his deepest heart, he was very glad that Namine had killed Holly because he wouldn’t have been satisfied with her just being in prison. He would have wanted her dead so badly that he might have driven to her house one night after she was free and killed her himself. He was happy Namine had killed her. He was happy Holly was dead, but if it meant having his precious Lilet back, he would have allowed her to live in his house with him, tortuously close. 

Instead, Holly Hart was dead. 

Lilet Strife was dead. 

And Sora Strife was alone and very empty. 

Abruptly, Kairi’s wails stopped and the night was horrifyingly silent as the grave.

…

It was fucking God awful, Axel thought as he gently lifted Kairi’s limp unconscious body from the cold floor into his arms. She had suffered so much, suffered an entire month not knowing where her daughter was only to discover that her own mother had not only stolen her child but murdered her. Beside him, Lea eased Lilet’s broken little rotting body into the coffin and covered her with a sheaf of red silk with adoring tenderness. His child had grown so much in the years Axel had lost him, so much. 

“You knew she was dead?” Axel asked his son softly.

Lea nodded. “She went with that woman and she never came back. Sometimes, that woman would come in here for hours and she would be shouting that Lilet took everything from her,” he said softly. “I knew she was dead, but she was so sweet. She hugged me and we were in the same cage for a while.”

A knot formed in Axel’s throat. “That’s all over now, Lea,” he whispered.

Lea looked up at his father, big green eyes shining. “I know, Daddy,” he said softly and sweetly and also with such profound sadness that it destroyed Axel’s heart. “It’s like Lilet never happened.”

…

Namine was safely in her apartment, standing at the window in her bra and holding her shirt stained with Holly’s blood. A few moments ago, Roxas had been staring up at her as if she was a misplaced angel fallen to earth so she had closed the drapes on him, hating to see either adoration, gratitude, or blame in anyone’s eyes. She didn’t kill bad people for their victims of even for the police. She killed them for herself and only for herself. 

On her bed, the things she had stolen from Officer Riku Wise were laid out on the mussed coverlet. She would return the badge and unused Taser to Axel as soon as this all cleared up. And she had no doubt that it would be quickly cleared up because that was the awful truth about bad things… After it was all over, it was like nothing had ever happened. No one cared for more than a week and it was quickly forgotten by anyone not directly involved. Wordlessly, she threw away her stained shirt, stripped, and got into the shower to wash the blood off her hands, like nothing ever happened.

X X X

And, drum roll please, we are finished! I’m so evil. What’s that, two non-happy endings in a row? It’s because I’m in a non-happy ending mood (and I actually planned to have Lilet die from the start). See THIRD for more!

Here we go. Very important author's note, as always:

First, drop a review and let me know what you think! Are the characters way out of character? Does everybody hate Holly? Think I torture Sora and Kairi way too much (especially since they didn’t get a happy ending?)? Are permanently disgusted and can no longer even play Kingdom Hearts thanks to me? Loved it? Hated it? Are scared for life because of what happened to poor Lilet? Are traumatized by the thought of people that evil living on our planet (and they do)? (Remember, flames will be used to roast marshmallows and weenies! And I’ll most likely flame you back for being silly.) Think I need to do more editing before I post chapters? Post to slow? Chapters are too short? Too long? Yada, yada, yada…

Second, I own nothing except my original characters: Amber, Jackie, Bird-Man-Bill, Holly Hart, and Lilet. And I think that's everyone. I also own my plot as twisted and evil as it was! So there, now I can't be sued! 

!!!Third, remember “Lilet Never Happened” and if she was still alive, she clearly happened so I don’t want countless reviews reaming me out for killing off the child. I would have warned you, but let’s face it, it would have ruined the ending for you. So, yes, she had to die. Please recover from that!!!

Fourth, there will be no sequel… at all, so don't ask!

Fifth, check out my first ORIGINAL NOVEL! **The Breaking of Poisonwood by Paradise Avenger.** (Summary: People were dead. When Skye Davis bought me at a slave auction as a birthday present for his brother, I had no idea what my new life was going to be like, but I had never expected this. It all started when Venus de Luna was killed and I was to take her place, to become the new savior… Then, bad things happened and some people died. In the heart of the earth, we discovered the ancient being that Frank Davis had found and created and used to his advantage. The Poisonwood—)

Finally, thank you for making it this far! All the way to the end! Woot! Yay! You are all awesome!

And so, I bid you adieu. (Wow, that was a long author’s note!)

Questions, comments, concerns?


End file.
